Politics
Peter Franklin: Our shallow and simplistic debate over energy policy is a threat to national security
Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
Can we have a grown-up conversation about energy please? Because right now, we’re not getting one. I’ll get on to the pro-green side of the debate in a bit, but let’s start with the anti-greens — seeing as they now control policy in both the Conservative Party and Reform UK.
If you were to ask Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage about the root causes of our energy insecurities, you can bet they’d reach for a two-word explanation beginning with “net” and ending with “zero”. Indeed, Net Zero has become to the Right what Brexit is to the Left — a general purpose whipping boy for everything that’s gone wrong with the British economy.
But that doesn’t help us with the latest surge in energy prices. After all, it’s not Greta Thunberg blocking the Straits of Hormuz, but an unpredictable, open-ended conflict with Iran.
Crude oil prices are forecast to hit $100 per barrel this week. And if Donald Trump doesn’t wrap this up pronto, there’ll be much worse to come. Even if Iranian missiles and drones don’t destroy the Gulf’s energy infrastructure, the squeeze on tanker traffic is already wreaking havoc. Oil storage facilities in the region are filling-up fast. That in turn threatens a massive shut-down in production and processing — which won’t be reversed easily or quickly. And remember, it’s not just oil. The Qataris are shutting down their LNG export terminals, which is why natural gas prices are spiking too.
But that’s the cost of relying on imported fossil fuels, especially exports from Russia and the Middle East. As well as enriching some of the world’s worst people, we’ve staked Europe’s security on a series of vulnerable bottlenecks — including Russia’s oil and gas pipelines; both ends of the Red Sea; and the aforementioned Straits of Hormuz. Since 2020, all of those have been choked-off — in some cases for months or even years. The harsh truth is that in weighing up the pros-and-cons of different forms of energy we can no longer assume the unimpeded east-west flow of oil and gas.
So when you hear someone urging the country to get real about the vulnerabilities of renewable energy, but without also acknowledging the fragilities of a hydrocarbon-based economy, the argument is either blinkered or made in bad faith.
Of course, the same applies in reverse. For instance, here’s the Business Secretary, Peter Kyle, using the current crisis to call for a “doubling down on renewables.” Well, I’m all in favour of doubling, tripling and quadrupling the deployment of wind and solar power. Not only is it clean and un-depletable, it’s also domestically produced — with obvious benefits for security of supply and our balance-of-payments. One little thing though: what happens when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine? Yes, we’ve kept the lights on so far, but the more wind and solar we deploy, the harder it becomes to compensate for its natural variability.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t find solutions. In fact, the technologies we need to store electrical power are making rapid progress. However, to minimise the costs of this transition, the last thing we ought to be doing is holding ourselves to an artificially accelerated timetable. But that’s precisely what’s happening thanks to Labour’s deranged plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030. Note that there’s no international treaty compelling the country to jump through this hoop. It’s an entirely self-inflicted policy, pushed — and obsessively pursued — by Ed Miliband.
But that’s the problem with our polarised energy debate. To see only the problems with your opponents’ policies leads to virtue signalling with regard to your own.
For instance, the 2030 target only makes sense as a demonstration of ideological correctness. The same goes for another Miliband policy: the ban on new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. Again, there is no international obligation on UK to make this sacrifice. Nor does is it required by Net Zero which is about consumption not production. Even within the constraints of the 2050 target we’ll still be consuming oil and gas for decades to come — albeit oil and gas we’d have to import instead of producing ourselves. There’s also the absurd inconsistency with the government’s belated efforts to boost production from existing capacity in the North Sea.
Perhaps Ed Miliband thinks his virtue signals are setting a good example, but no one in the world is looking at the costs, chaos and contradictions of British energy policy and saying: “I’ll have what they’re having”.
Sometimes, the natural reaction to excessive virtue signalling is to “vice signal” — that is, to deliberately defy the conventions of a prevailing, but failing, moral order.
Thus Kemi Badenoch has made a point of promising to reverse Labour’s ban on new oil exploration in British waters. Assuming that we can squeeze a few extra drops from the North Sea, this would be good for the public purse, our trade deficit and jobs. There’s also a modest environmental benefit in that extracting fossil fuels close to home tends to spew less carbon dioxide than importing the stuff from afar. Nurturing British expertise in marine engineering also produces transferable skills for offshore renewables.
But let’s not get carried away. Opening new fields will, at best, slow down the decline in North Sea production, not reverse it. Any impression to the contrary is a reminder that vice signalling, like virtue signalling, is just a gesture.
I fear that we’re falling into a similar trap in regard to new nuclear. The dangerous glamour of this technology makes tempting fodder for a vice signal, but the reality isn’t quite so titillating. There’s only one nuclear plant currently under construction in the UK and that’s Hinkley Point C in Somerset. Unfortunately there’s been yet another delay to the completion of the project and yet another budget-busting cost increase. In today’s money, the total projected cost now stands at £49 billion and that’s assuming no further bad news. Luckily, it’ll be the project owners picking up the tab for the overrun not the British taxpayer or bill payer (a fact for which we have my old boss, Greg Clark, to thank). But the same is not true of the proposed Sizewell C plant, which was recently given the go-ahead by Labour and for which the British state will underwrite a massive chunk of the construction risk.
In theory a “fleet” of new nuclear power stations could supply an abundance of home-produced, low carbon energy — but at £50 billion a pop, what we need to worry about isn’t the danger of a reactor meltdown, but the financial meltdown if it turns out we’ve paid the French or Chinese for a herd of white elephants. So I’m sorry neutron-fans, the fact is that we need some kind of technological breakthrough before we can sensibly take the nuclear bet. It may be that that Small Modular Reactors are the way forward, but before getting too excited about those wait for a final quote from the builders.
At this point I’d better stop my drive-by shooting of our energy options. There are others, from coal to fracking to energy efficiency, but they all have their problems too.
So if there are no easy answers, how about a hard answer? Well, in extremely condensed form, here are three things we ought to be doing:
Firstly, we need to work toward a full alignment of environmental and energy security objectives. Wherever contradictions crop up in the policy framework, let’s strip them out. That includes anything (or anyone) whose effect is to replace home produced energy with imports.
Secondly, it’s time to stop targeting given quantities of decarbonisation — especially by unnecessary deadlines. Instead, the machinery of the state should be reorientated towards a related, but distinct, objective — which is to relentlessly bear down on the cost of clean and secure energy. Whether this displeases the energy companies or the environmental NGOs is immaterial. The only guarantee of defeating global warming is if clean tech becomes so cheap and reliable that the world can’t afford not to use it.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we have to get serious about industrial strategy. Alongside our allies, we’ve agreed to spend 5 per cent of our GDP on defence and national resilience (the latter of which includes energy security). That is only affordable if we use these vast sums strategically to build-up our economy as a hi-tech manufacturing power house.
The parallel, intertwined effort to secure clean and affordable energy supplies must work with and not against that goal.
“Hasslers,” or people who repeatedly “create problems or make life more difficult” for you, can literally age you, a new study published in PNAS found.
Stating that relationships like these are “not rare,” the researchers added that they are “disproportionately experienced by individuals facing greater social and health vulnerabilities, and consequential for ageing”.
And the more of these sorts of relationships, the worse the health outcomes seem to be.
How do “hasslers” affect our health?
This research showed that for every “hassler” in a person’s life, biological ageing sped up by 1.5%, or nine months.
The authors think this could happen because negative interactions chronically strain the body’s hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which helps to regulate stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
And, they posit, the chronic stress of talking to “hasslers” leads to lasting inflammation, which is linked to ageing if it lasts when the body doesn’t need it.
This could, they say, be an example of allostatic load; a form of “wear and tear” that happens when we try repeatedly to adapt to ongoing stress.
That might be why people with more “hasslers” fared worse, on average, on measures like self-reported health, psychiatric symptoms, epigenetic inflammation scores, and waist-to-hip ratio.
How common are hasslers?
Almost 30% of us have one or more in our lives, the paper stated.
But some people are more likely than others to have “hasslers”.
Who’s most likely to have hasslers?
What types of hasslers are there?
This study looked at kin and nonkin hasslers as well as spouse hasslers.
In this research, only the first two were found to affect participants’ biological ageing.
“Ties characterised by obligation, shared space, or structural interdependence, such as parents, children, coworkers, or roommates, are more likely to be hasslers than voluntary, self-selected ties such as friends, church members, and neighbours,” the paper reads.
Kin hasslers are the most linked to accelerated ageing, while nonkin hasslers seemed to affect mortality-sensitive metrics the most.
Donald Trump has decided to ease oil sanctions after a one-hour call with Vladimir Putin about the Iran war.
The US president announced on Monday that while the US had sanctions on “some countries”, he would “take those sanctions off until the strait [of Hormuz] is up”.
While he did not specify which countries he was referring to, Trump’s declaration came shortly after he had a lengthy chat with the Russian autocrat – who has been trapped under heavy trade sanctions ever since invading Ukraine in 2022.
After the US-Israel strikes on Iran, Tehran retaliated by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz which carries a fifth of the world’s oil supply.
Oil prices have started to rise as a result and there are fears of a global economic shock.
Only on Sunday, Trump said the soaring cost of oil was a “very small price to pay for peace”.
But on Monday evening, he effectively undid years of united work in the west by easing sanctions around Russia’s oil industry, which fuels its war machine.
It is the world’s second-largest oil exporter and holds the world’s biggest reserves of natural gas.
Doing a deal with the US while it tears the Middle East apart is an eyebrow-raising move from Russia, too.
Tehran has been an ally to Moscow for years while it’s been isolated on the world stage, even providing weapons for Russia to use against Ukraine.
Putin also condemned the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the US-Israeli strikes at the start of the war, just over a week ago, as “murder”.
Evidently, Putin has decided to look past that indiscretion so he can benefit from Iran’s decline.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said the conversation between Trump and his Russian counterpart was “frank and businesslike”.
He claimed Putin had “voiced a few ideas aimed at a quick political and diplomatic settlement” of the conflict after speaking to Gulf leaders and Iran’s president.
Meanwhile, Trump offered his assessment of the situation “in the context of the ongoing US-Israeli operation”, according to Ushakov.
They had a “specific and useful” exchange of views and discussed Venezuela “in the context of the situation in the global oil market”.
Trump kidnapped Venezuela’s president and Putin’s ally Nicolas Maduro in January and has since sent US companies in to “restore” its oil industry.
Putin also suggested Russia was prepared to supply oil and gas to Europe.
Trump already gave Moscow a boost last week by granting India a temporary waive to purchase some oil from Russia while its usual supply from Iran is disrupted.
The president also touched on Putin’s ongoing war in Ukraine, claiming they spoke about the “never-ending fight” in the “positive call”.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that Kyiv is ready for US-backed peace talks with Russia “at any moment.
However, Ukrainian officials have pointed out that the US is now distracted with the conflict in the Middle East right now.
The conflict is also expected to reduce the number of weapons available to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia.
Right-wing warhawks have been doubling down on calls to slash Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) welfare to fund imperialistic warmongering against Iran.
Naturally, it’s the usual suspects spearheading the charge, namely opaquely-funded think tanks, the billionaire press, and of course, their co-conspirators in parliament.
And once again, these rich colonial capitalist assholes all want to make poor and disabled people cannon fodder for their illegal invasions.
Slash DWP welfare to fund illegal war: here we go again
First to the welfare cut chest beating was the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) on 3 March. As the US and Israel heinously massacred close to 800 people in Iran, unprovoked, including 168 children at a girl’s school, the CSJ slipped out a comment on chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget with a not-so subtle militaristic subtext. Predictably, policy director Joe Shalam lambasted the “spend on health benefits” compared to the “defence budget”, calling it a:
monumental waste of human potential.
Translation: disaster capitalists are ogling the opportunity to exploit disabled people for war profits.
Next came former Tory MP Dehenna Davison on Jeremy Vine spouting the same worn rhetoric. And incidentally, she drew on CSJ research:
Nobody gets PIP for “low level anxiety and depression”. The criteria does not allow it and 62% of PIP claims are rejected as there has to be evidence of severity. So Im afraid zero bombs could be made by stopping this as it isnt happening. CSJ talking shite as usual. https://t.co/Z1FC4txS9E
— Spin Decoder (@leith1076) March 6, 2026
Meanwhile, leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch was at Conservative spring conference maxing out the jingoism. She was banging on about bringing back the two-child limit to benefits. According to the Independent, a Tory policy wonk somewhere has totted up the numbers. The party calculated that un-abolishing the cap would spare the government £3.2bn worth of annual spend.
Instead of lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty, the Tories want to use half that to recruit 20,000 new troops. And doubtless the majority of them will be from working class households the cap has trapped in poverty to boot.
Reporting on this, vile shitrag the Daily Mail prefaced its headline “Bullets over benefits”. Because that’s the kind of clickbait late-stage capitalist hellscape we now live in. It’s one where major political party leaders would literally rather the government spend taxpayer cash to buy bullets to murder kids in cold blood abroad, than fund social security to stop kids from starving in one of the richest nations in the world.
The Centre for Social Justice pushing warfare over welfare
Then, over the weekend, the right-wing press – including the Express and the Telegraph – went into further overdrive.
The culprit was once again Iain Duncan Smith’s brainchild, the CSJ.
Specifically, it published research utilising Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimations that welfare spending will increase by £18bn this year. By the CSJ’s maths, it said this could finance:
15 advanced Royal Navy frigates, 220 fighter jets, or 250,000 soldiers’ salaries, more than three times the size of the regular British Army.
However, even the war-frenzied Labour government came out critical, calling it a “deeply disingenuous report”. Notably, it pointed out that “well over half” of this will be spent on pensions. Of course, it was quick to then highlight its defence budget increases. And consequently, it undid any good work it did debunking the CSJ analysis.
And as is the ego-massaging nature of think tanks, both the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance reared their ugly warmongering, welfare-snatching heads here too, backing the CSJ.
The kids aren’t alright – so let’s stop state support and send them to war?!
The CSJ also snuck into its press release on the research that it had:
called on ministers to follow through with proposals to scrap certain benefits for under 22s to instead fund a scheme helping employers take on British young people not in work, education or training.
So of course that scheme it’s referring to is the government’s flagship ‘Youth Guarantee’. That’s the one hellbent on shunting young people into low-paying or below minimum wage labour. And naturally, as the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has pointed out, it’s about kicking them off Universal Credit as well.
Unsurprisingly, the vicious CSJ wants the government to fund the Youth Guarantee by literally banning “certain benefits” for under 22s. In March 2025, (now former) DWP boss Liz Kendall actually announced its disgraceful plan to do just that with the limited capability for work related activity (LCWRA) part of Universal Credit (UC).
At the time, the Canary’s HG noted how a callous Kendall told ministers her depraved plan for tackling youth unemployment involved pushing more young people to join the armed forces.
Now it appears, in just under a year, we’ve already come full circle. At the end of February the DWP held its first Youth Guarantee jobs fair. Behemoths of the military industrial complex stacked it to the rafters. As Charlton-Dailey reported:
the Royal Air Force and the UK Armed Forces were there to seduce working-class kids with the promise of a stable income, a roof over their heads and “duty”.
What’s more, arms manufacturers propping up Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and now undoubtedly the attacks on Iran, were out recruiting in force.
National security over social security: the same old story
One happened to be F-35 fighter jet parts supplier Teledyne. The electronics manufacturer had a seat at the table in a cosy 16-company discussion with DWP boss Pat McFadden. And just who has been vociferously sounding the battle cry to cut welfare to increase military spending? That would be, former paid Teledyne advisor and retired “general for hire” – ex-army chief and currently suspended peer, one Lord Richard Dannatt.
Ultimately, when the right-wing establishment calls for cuts to welfare for warfare, it means serving up working class and disabled people to its necro-capitalist war-machine.
The narrative of slashing social security to beef up supposed ‘national security’ is certainly nothing new. It’s an abhorrent time-honoured tradition that UK governments collaborate in militaristic colonial resource-grabbing with the US and other imperialistic warmongers. And there’s a pattern of governments using it to redirect the public’s attention away from their own corruption and failures. The ‘enemy’ abroad distracts from and justifies austerity at home.
In the coming days and weeks, we can likely expect many more calls like this from greedy imperialistic grifters – let’s be honest, mostly wealthy white men – whose kids the DWP won’t be forcing to the frontlines or production houses of another illegal war.
Featured image via the Canary
A Labour row has erupted as Keir Starmer prepares for a backbench rebellion over the government’s plans to scrap most jury trials.
MPs will vote on the second reading of the Courts and Tribunals Bill tonight.
It contains plans to end jury trials in cases that carry a likely sentence of less than three years, which would instead be heard in front of a lone judge.
Ministers say the drastic move is necessary to clear the huge backlog of cases in the court system.
But critics say jury trials are a fundamental right and should not be scrapped under any circumstances.
Up to 80 Labour MPs were reported to be ready to vote against the policy, potentially putting the government’s huge Commons majority at risk.
HuffPost UK has learned that a deal was done on Monday night between justice secretary David Lammy and Karl Turner, the chief critic of the proposals, which will see most of the rebels either abstain or vote with the government.
Turner, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, said the government has agreed to a “meaningful review” of the new system to assess whether it is working in practice.
But he said: “After the meeting with Lammy, that lasted for more than an hour, I’m even more convinced than ever that these proposals won’t work.
“Ministers won’t answer the questions because they don’t have answers to them.”
Turner said he was “more confident than ever” that the government will be defeated when the bill reaches report stage in the Commons.
He said: “I think this is going to die a death. We’re going to be able to amend the worst excesses out of it at report stage.”
But a government source said: “The fact that Karl Turner is now not voting against the government on juries shows one thing – he was completely unable to persuade a critical mass of the Parliamentary Labour Party. This has been clear for some time now, despite media reports.
“Constant assertions that the government definitely could not get this through second reading were wide of the mark, and that there would be resignations. It is the dog that didn’t bark.”
Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), who’s faced a firestorm over hundreds of stock trades after campaigning in 2024 on a promise to ban congressional stock trading, has insisted he doesn’t talk to his financial adviser about the activity and that he has no input on them.
But a little-noticed local radio interview from last April contradicts a significant part of Bresnahan’s line on the market moves.
When asked last spring about the trades after a New York Times story highlighted how he flip-flopped on the campaign pledge, he told the host, Bob Cordaro, “I mean, I meet with my financial adviser. We talk about, you know, what different positions are coming up.”
The interview — which is no longer available on the website for Cordaro’s show — is starkly different from Bresnahan’s previous statements about the trading he and his spokespeople have made on multiple occasions in the last year.
Bresnahan campaign spokesman Chris Pack said Bresnahan’s comments were “referring to 30,000 foot investment strategy and not about stock trades, and that is clear in the surrounding context of the interview.”
One Democratic operative aware of the audio, granted anonymity to speak candidly about campaign strategy, predicted that Bresnahan’s own words in the interview could be used in ads against him ahead of the November midterms when he’ll take on Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti in a highly competitive district. Cognetti lists banning congressional trading as her first issue on her campaign website.
In June, when pressed about the topic by a constituent during a tele-town hall, Bresnahan said, “I think you need to know that the trades are being executed on my behalf. I do not have any dialogues with my financial advisers.” In July, he said he provided “absolutely no investment advice or input to my financial advisers.”
A month later, he inserted a line in his Periodic Transaction Reports in which he asserted: “All investment decisions related to my personal financial portfolio are delegated to professional financial advisors. I have no role in, nor am informed of, specific investment decisions prior to their execution.” Members of Congress are required to file the reports to disclose Wall Street transactions.
During a time of public distrust of Congress, the issue of congressional stock trading has become a symbol of members appearing to enrich themselves based on inside information that they learn in office. Even President Donald Trump called for a ban on this type of trading during his State of the Union address. Both parties have competing proposals to reform the practice but action is currently stalled.
Bresnahan’s congressional spokesperson, Hannah Pope, told the New York Times in August that the trades are done by a financial adviser without his input. He learns about them when the public does through reports that members of Congress have to file on their trading, she said.
In the April interview with Cordaro, he was asked by the friendly conservative host: “Sum and substance, you’re saying, ‘Look, I did not buy and sell on information I’ve gleaned here in Congress. My adviser’s doing my trading for me, and I am duly reporting it.’ Is that fair?”
Bresnahan responded by saying, “Absolutely. Absolutely. Right hand to God on my mother’s life. Without a question.” He then said he sometimes learns about the trades on X accounts that track congressional stock trading reports. “I’m not on a day by day, minute by minute. I mean, I meet with my financial adviser. We talk about, you know, what different positions are coming up.”
Bresnahan then says he “actually even took it a step further” and is exiting his real estate holdings in Pittston, a city in his district, to avoid conflicts of interests in his congressional work.
Pack, the Bresnahan campaign spokesperson, called questions about his investing “a ridiculous stretch.”
“To imply that Rob having the equivalent of a routine annual 401(k) meeting with his financial advisers to discuss risk tolerance amounts to insider trading would mean that every member of Congress or congressional staffer who discusses risk tolerance as part of their retirement planning is also engaged in insider trading,” he said.
“Does this same standard apply to Goldman Sachs banker Paige Cognetti, whose financial disclosure reports list millions of dollars in investment holdings, and whether she has routine conversations with her financial adviser about long-term strategy?” (Cognetti worked for Goldman Sachs between 2014 and 2016.)
When asked about POLITICO’s reporting on Bresnahan, Ted Rossman, a principal analyst at Bankrate.com, said that different financial advisers have different ways of working with clients to maximize portfolio growth, with some talking to clients about individual stock positions and others being more general.
“But even if it’s not a direct order to buy or sell a certain amount of an individual company, just sharing thoughts on themes in the market and the economy could be problematic politically since members of Congress have information that the average public is not privy to,” said Rossman.
Bresnahan, who comes from a wealthy Pennsylvania construction family, has bemoaned the controversy, raising the question in July that if he stopped trading, he could lose money. “And then do what with it? Just leave it all in the accounts and just leave it there and lose money and go broke?”
When running for Congress in 2024, Bresnahan campaigned on a pledge to ban congressional stock trading, writing in a letter to a local newspaper that “the idea that we can buy and sell stocks while voting on legislation that will have a direct impact on these companies is wrong and needs to come to an end immediately.” But last year he was one of the most prolific stock traders in Congress, making more than 600 stock trades in 2025 before suspending the trading toward the end of the year after much criticism.
Among his trades at issue have been the sale of Pennsylvania health care-related bonds worth between $100,001 and $250,000 and stock in four Medicaid providers worth up to $130,000 before he voted on massive Medicaid cuts. Democrats seized on clips of the Bresnahan trades that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico brought up on Joe Rogan, during a discussion of how broken Washington was, and even on conservative channel OAN.
The trades have also been noticed by his constituents, with 54 percent of voters in his swing district knowing about the trades in an August Public Policy Polling poll commissioned by Democratic group House Majority PAC. House Republicans also have privately raised concerns about the issue hurting Bresnahan, who has since introduced his own legislation to ban stock trading.
His trading has made its way into the campaign. A seven-figure TV ad campaign is already underway that cites his Medicaid-related stock trades. Cognetti, who does not own any individual stocks, featured Bresnahan’s stock trading as one of her main issues in her announcement video.
During the tele-town hall in June, one woman who said she had voted for him confronted Bresnahan, telling him, “You’re making all these trades … I thought you were supposed to stop trading,” adding, “I didn’t send you there to trade.”
The BBC’s top Middle East expert has demolished Donald Trump’s latest claims about the war in Iran.
Jeremy Bowen, the broadcaster’s international affairs editor, said there was “no evidence” for some of the things the US president is saying.
Bowen said Trump had been “rather spooked by the economic consequences thus far of the war” after a spike in oil prices raised fears of a global crisis.
“He’s trying to calm the markets a little bit, he’s shaping the victory he’s going to claim,” said Bowen.
“He’s still actually claiming erroneously that Iran was a few weeks away from getting a nuclear weapon – there’s no evidence for that.
“He’s also said that Iran has Tomahawk cruise missiles that could have destroyed that girls’ school where so many were killed. There’s no evidence for that either because they’ve only sold them to Britain and Australia.”
Bowen also disputed Trump’s claims that the war is “very complete, pretty much”, and warned that the potential consequences for the whole Middle East are huge.
He said: “In terms of the wider region, if what’s happening subsequently causes chaos and breakdown in Iran, and right now the regime appears to be surviving, that will be immensely dangerous regionally.”
Iran has also disputed Trump’s claims that the war is nearing its end.
A spokesperson from the IRGC – Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps – said: “It is we who will determine the end of the war.
“The equations and future status of the region are now in the hands of our armed forces; American forces will not end the war.”
Illustration by Tracy Worrall
4 min read
Lessons in political science. This week: waka
A few years ago, a reviewer of a book I’d edited complained that it was not so much full of conversation starters but conversation stoppers. When this was reported back to the academic contributors, it was not taken as criticism. “We are,” one of the authors said, with a little too much enthusiasm, “the sort of people who like to say: ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that’.”
This exchange came to mind as the petition calling for automatic by-elections whenever an MP changes party sailed past 100,000 signatures; it is now scheduled for debate later this month. On the face of it, it seems fair enough – if an MP is elected under one party but then changes affiliation, why shouldn’t voters get a say? – but it is, yes, a bit more complicated than that, involving some fundamental questions about the role of an MP, and ones that could easily have unintended consequences if we are not careful.
There have been two Private Members’ Bills on this issue in recent decades, in 2011 and 2020. Both attempted to introduce a recall petition if an MP voluntarily changed affiliation. The voluntary bit is important, else we could be giving the party whips the sort of disciplinary tool of which they can currently only dream.
“If you don’t vote with us on the Murder of the First Born (No 2) Bill, then we will remove the whip, and you will have to fight a by-election.”
“Ah, well, yes, I wasn’t in favour initially, but I do now see the wisdom of the government’s position.”
Yet I am not sure this voluntary/involuntary distinction works. It is always worth asking: how might someone – someone who was perhaps a bit sneaky – use this to their advantage? In this case, what is to stop an MP staying within their party but behaving differently? You don’t need to defect from the Conservatives; you just start wearing turquoise, telling people to vote Reform, voting the Reform line and so on.
New Zealand offers an interesting lesson. It passed laws against party-hopping in both 2001 and 2018. They have a great term for it: ‘waka-jumping’, after the Māori word for canoe. The creators of the 2001 law were rightly suspicious that not all MPs would voluntarily announce they were defecting – so they created a system by which the party leadership could also report an MP as having de facto left their party, subject to some procedural hoop-jumping and the support of two-thirds of the parliamentary group.
As Andrew Geddis notes in his account of the legislation, this effectively changes the ownership of the seat from the MP to the party. Even if it is not the intention, it is easy enough to see how such rules lead to a tightening of party discipline. Indeed, one of the many curiosities of this issue is that there are many people who feel negatively about defections but positively about rebellious MPs. Yet many of the arguments used against allowing MPs to defect can easily be deployed against MPs being allowed to vote against their party whip. In India, MPs are barred from both.
Debates on this are not helped by the hypocrisy frequently involved. If you have a spare five minutes, look at the supporters of those two previous Private Members’ Bills. You might note that several were later to switch parties; you might also note that not one of them then resigned their seat. Rules for thee, not for me.
A final note: don’t call it crossing the floor, unless they actually cross the floor. Most changes of party label take place on the same side of the House; they are much less consequential.
Further reading: A Geddis, Proportional Representation, ‘Party Hopping’ and the Limits of Electoral Regulation: A Cautionary Tale from New Zealand, Common Law World Review (2006) and his Standards of MP Behaviour and Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘Party Hopping’ Law, Public Law Review (2025)
If you missed your window to see the critically-acclaimed British drama I Swear in cinemas, movie fans can now stream the film from the comfort of their living rooms.
Based on the life experiences of Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson, I Swear was released in the autumn of 2025, and stars newcomer Robert Aramayo in the lead role alongside Maxine Peake and Shirley Henderson.
The film received rave reviews – resulting in a rare 100% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes and an average of 4.3 stars on Letterboxd – and was also a big hit at the Baftas last month, where Robert beat stiff competition from the likes of Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael B Jordan to pick up the Best Actor prize.
As of Tuesday morning, I Swear is finally available to stream on Netflix UK, meaning users of the service can now check out the film for themselves.
I Swear’s official synopsis says the film is “inspired by the life of John Davidson” and charts “his journey from a misunderstood teenager in 1980s Britain to a present day advocate for the understanding and acceptance of Tourette Syndrome”.
“Diagnosed aged 15, John navigates his way against the odds through troubled teenage years and into adulthood, finding inspiration in the kindness of others to discover his true purpose in life,” the description continues.
Robert also picked up the Rising Star title at the 2026 Baftas off the back of his work in I Swear, which was also awarded the Best Casting prize, having scored five nominations in total in the lead-up to the ceremony.
Of course, the film also became one of the most-talked about following this year’s Baftas after John experienced a number of involuntary tics while attending the awards show with the cast and crew.
Although most of these tics were not included in the BBC’s final broadcast, one – in which he shouted the N-word while Sinners actors Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting on stage – did make its way into the national broadcaster’s coverage, which aired on a two-hour time delay.
Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock
The following day, the BBC removed the Baftas broadcast from its iPlayer service, apologising for what was later described by a spokesperson as a “genuine mistake”.
Following Delroy Lindo’s comments expressing disappointment with how Bafta handled the incident, the organisation issued a statement accepting “full responsibility” for what transpired.
John later said in his own statement: “Whilst I will never [apologise] for having Tourette syndrome, I will apologise for any pain, upset and misunderstanding that it may create.
“This past week has been tough, and has reminded me that what I do, raising awareness for such a misunderstood condition, there is still a long way to go and I will keep on keeping on until this is achieved.”
Donald Trump’s claim that the war in Iran might soon be “over” has been dismissed by the country’s regime.
Amid rising oil prices and a turbulent energy market, the US president told CBS News his offensive “is very complete, pretty much” ten days after he and Israel initiated strikes on Iran.
“They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force,” he said.
Trump suggested that the conflict would end before the initial four-week time frame he previously laid out.
Bizarrely, he also said: “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough.”
The White House’s initial war aims remain unclear so it’s hard to predict when American forces will decide it’s time to withdraw.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday his forces were looking for regime change.
Trump also threatened Tehran on Monday, warning of a major backlash if Iran were to block the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway which transports a fifth of the global oil supply.
But the Iranian military rejected all of Trump’s “nonsense”.
A spokesperson from the IRGC – Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps – said: “It is we who will determine the end of the war.
“The equations and future status of the region are now in the hands of our armed forces; American forces will not end the war.”
The IRGC also claimed they would not allow any oil to be shipped out of the Middle East if the strikes continue.
That claim evidently did not deter the US president, who doubled down on his warnings in a later Truth Social post.
He said: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said his country was unlikely to continue talks with the States after three rounds of failed negotiations over capping Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
Speaking to PBS, he said: “Still, they decided to attack us. So I don’t think talking to the Americans anymore would be on our agenda any more.”
A BBC expert has called out Donald Trump’s attempts to “play down” the global oil supply crisis triggered by his decision to go to war with Iran.
Around a fifth of the world’s oil supply is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, but that has virtually stopped since the war began.
That has led to a massive spike in oil prices, threatening a global economic crisis.
In a post on Truth Social last night, the US president threatened Iran with “death, fire and fury” unless it is opened up again.
He added: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
But on Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, BBC Africa editor Barbara Plett-Usher said that was an attempt by the president to create “a distraction” from the consequences of his own actions.
She said: “He started by musing that the US was thinking about taking over the Strait of Hormuz – ‘we could do a lot’, he said. Then in his [press conference] he said the US attacks could rise sharply if Iran tried to blow up tanker traffic – ‘we’ll hit them so hard’ etc etc.
“Then Iran’s Revolutionary Guard responded and said we’re not going to let one litre be shipped through if you and the Israelis continue to attack, and we will determine the end of the war.
“Then Trump escalated in his Truth Social post, in caps, saying if they stop the oil we’ll hit them 20 times harder then they’ve hit thus far.
“All of this is a distraction to the fact that the flow of oil has stopped and Trump is trying to play that down.
“He’s said it’s not really affecting Americans, it won’t last that long, but in effect it’s shut, only a trickle of boats getting through. And it’s difficult to see it opening as long as this hot conflict goes on.”
Plett-Usher also cast doubt on Trump’s explanation for why he started the war, and his claim that other Middle East countries are grateful that he did.
She said: “He suggested that the war was a pre-emptive strike because he said Iran was preparing to launch strikes against its neighbours and potentially a nuclear weapon at Israel.
“He said ‘if we didn’t hit them first they were going to hit our allies first’. He said ‘the countries in the Middle East, very rich countries, are very, very lucky that I’m here’.
“I don’t think any of the Arab countries are feeling particularly lucky that President Trump made the decision he did. They lobbied very hard to try to prevent it and they didn’t expect Iran to attack them unless the Americans and Israelis attacked Iran first.”
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