The inexorable growth in casework is stopping MPs from fulfilling their other roles. Alice Lilly sifts through the inbox looking for what might be done to relieve the pressure
Advertisement
None of this is new. Nearly two decades ago the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) expressed concern that MPs’ “casework appears to be growing inexorably”.
At the time MPs’ offices were complaining that they were dealing with a few hundred letters a week, as well as phone calls and the occasional, still relatively novel, email. Today MPs routinely post casework figures on their social media that imply they are dealing with tens of thousands of cases a year.
Some of the drivers are well understood: public services in decline, the pandemic, and technology that eases communication. But also at the heart of the ever-expanding workload is a deep confusion over what MPs, shared in no little measure by the members themselves, are actually for.
Advertisement
The absence of reliable data on casework illustrates the point. Speak to somebody in an MP’s office and they can give you figures on their caseload, now usually drawn from the casework management software that many use.
But – because MPs are effectively treated like 650 small businesses – nobody sees it as their job to collect and collate this data. This makes it difficult to avoid over-generalising about their experiences, especially given that constituencies can vary considerably, as can MPs’ own approaches to their work: some still have earnings from employment outside of the Commons, although the nature of this work varies as well.
Necessary caveats aside, it is clear that many MPs, irrespective of party, are experiencing high workloads that have sharply increased even in the last few years.
Advertisement
When Hollie Wickens first began working for a Labour MP in the late 2010s, the office might expect to receive around 1,000 emails per month. Her current MP’s office, she says, can now receive double that. Ben Lake, the Plaid Cymru MP for Ceredigion Preseli, has likewise noticed an increase. In 2017, when he was first elected to Parliament, he might open 40 new cases per month – compared to 150 per month now. While numbers have been steadily on the rise for decades, “Covid changed everything,” says Lake. Initially, many MPs thought that the rise in casework during the pandemic would eventually subside. But it never has.
Demand has not only increased: it has done so more consistently across the year. The dips in casework that used to happen over the summer have faded, meaning that there is less chance to catch up. “We’re just keeping our noses above water most of the year,” says Charlotte Nichols, Labour MP for Warrington. Estelle Warhurst, an MP office manager with over 20 years’ experience, uses strikingly similar language: “There’s no downtime any more. No chance to catch up. We’re fighting to keep our head above water.”
Within these numbers are two main categories of correspondence: casework, and policy and campaign enquiries. Though they can entail different amounts of work, both are on the rise.
Policy and campaign enquiries – which can range from specific questions about an MP’s stance on a particular issue to mass-generated campaign emails – tend to make up a larger share of the inbox than casework.
Advertisement
Although casework may be a smaller part of the inbox, it usually entails more work. Some pieces of casework can be straightforward to deal with, while others are much more complicated. And it isn’t always easy to initially judge what work will be required. Warhurst points out that the issue a constituent presents with may only be the tip of the iceberg. One piece of casework could generate several email chains, as well as calls and meetings. And it can involve working with government departments, local councils, NHS trusts, or even private companies providing public services. Navigating this is a skill, and some MPs seek out staff with experience in addressing the kinds of issues that crop up time and again in their casework, for example SEND.
Because both casework and policy enquiries are growing so much, MPs must prioritise. Generally – and unsurprisingly – those wanting specific and sometimes urgent help tend to get dealt with first. When it comes to dealing with policy and campaign enquiries, approaches vary. Some MPs will try and write individual responses where they can, especially to specific policy enquiries (rather than mass campaign emails). Lizzi Collinge, who represents Morecambe and Lunesdale for Labour, points out that this is often a helpful way of thinking through policy issues. But, Collinge says, it takes time.
The trade-offs are often not understood by the public. This can drive frustration. Sometimes people assume that they’ve received a “boilerplate” response that has actually been specifically written for them.
Put together, all this can exert a toll on both MPs and staff – even if most will say it can be rewarding. In a 2025 staff survey, more than half agreed it could be “emotionally draining”. Laura Gherman, who previously worked for a senior Conservative MP, says burnout is a growing problem. “Nothing we do ever feels good enough,” adds Wickens. MPs are not immune to this either. It is “relentless”, to the extent that you can begin to question whether you’re doing a good enough job, says Nichols, who estimates that she can have 400 outstanding emails at any one time.
Advertisement
Then there is the nature of some of the work. Warhurst is aware that staff can sometimes find themselves dealing with constituents in the midst of severe mental health crises to the point of being suicidal. This is not the kind of thing that can simply be forgotten about at the end of the working day.
Beyond the impact on staff is the deeper issue of what this rising tide of work is doing to MPs’ abilities to do other work. Almost two decades ago, the SSRB fretted that casework “detracts from [MPs’] other roles of scrutinising legislation and holding the executive to account”. Scepticism about MPs’ roles as ‘super-councillors’ has persisted for years, but have we normalised something that should be aberrant?
Casework has “taken over MPs’ offices”, says Gherman, to the extent that it can make it hard to deal with anything else. Lake agrees that “MPs cannot be omnicompetent”, arguing that “we need more MPs with a bit of bandwidth to think” about legislation, as well as big policy challenges.
Illustration by: Tracy Worrall
Government and public services are often a confusing patchwork… But everybody knows that they have an MP
Advertisement
The plain truth is that the way that many MPs perform their roles is shaped more by facts on the ground – in particular, rising casework – than by a broader society-wide debate about what the purpose of MPs is.
Marcial Boo, who headed Ipsa (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority), for six years, says “every MP has their own view on what should change”. That no one body speaks for MPs makes it difficult to reach agreement – even if one was possible.
Some want more resource, others more flexibility. Others focus on increasing staff pay bands and giving more opportunities for progression in an effort to boost retention. AI might help to some degree – but even if MPs were able to agree on what steps to take, many of these things would only help to manage the growing caseload and its effects, rather than deal with the factors driving it. As Dr Rebecca McKee, an expert on MPs’ staffing arrangements, wrote in a 2019 report, changes “have offered relatively short-term solutions and the evolution of staff funding has lacked an explicit overarching vision of the role of an MP, what support they need, and how it can most effectively be delivered”. A more sustainable approach would be to ask some fundamental questions about what is driving rising caseloads and what this means for MPs.
Advertisement
A key driver of rising caseloads is what the mySociety researcher Alex Parsons calls “failure management”, in which MPs are increasingly first and last resort for constituents experiencing problems from across bits of the state. One MP echoed this, reflecting that their inbox indicates “everybody seems to be under an inordinate amount of pressure” and often deals with people “who have been badly let down” by other services, that are themselves overstretched.
This highlights another driver of ever-higher caseloads: confusion about which bits of the state do what, and where to go to get issues dealt with. Government and public services are often a confusing patchwork in the UK, meaning it is hard to know who has primary responsibility for a particular issue or the power to solve it. But everybody knows that they have an MP. Many of the issues that come up in inboxes, like potholes or planning, are somebody else’s responsibility.
Constituents can think that MPs have more power than they do. Hollie Wickens found when she first began working for an MP that “people think they are Batman and can go and solve any problem”.
These factors are underpinned by the incentives that many MPs face. Clearly, many parliamentarians have a strong incentive to try and help constituents because they went into politics to try and help people – and casework is a direct, tangible way of doing that. This incentive is even stronger given the very difficult situations that can arrive in the inbox. “MPs think they can do everything and want to do everything,” says Gherman.
Advertisement
Alex Parsons has another take on this. He suggests that the ability of the average backbencher to make policy or legislative change is constrained to the extent that it can be more rewarding for them to focus on helping individual constituents. Because there aren’t good mechanisms in place for many MPs to aggregate their casework and use it to bring about broader change, they instead pursue casework as a sort of “fragmented ombudsman” in which they “are poking the big state when it goes wrong, but not doing it in a joined up way”.
But there are also political incentives. Being regarded as a responsive and engaged MP that is active in the constituency can clearly have electoral benefits. The SSRB suggested as much in 2007, stating that “some MPs appear to welcome or accept [rising casework], at least in part because of the opportunity it offers for them to raise their profile with their constituents”. It is hardly surprising that MPs respond to this – but it goes to show once more how important public views and expectations are about what their elected representatives should do. As Lizzi Collinge puts it, an MP is likely “to receive more praise for spending an hour in a church hall than an hour in a select committee”.
There are no easy ways to unravel these problems. If it is hard to get agreement from MPs on practical steps to address the pressures many of them face, then it is likely to be even harder to reach a consensus on how to tackle the underlying causes of those pressures. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. And much of this is about more than the views of MPs and their staff, though those matter: it’s about what the public wants, expects and needs.
A recent experiment by Ipsa provides one potential starting point for these overdue public debates. In the autumn of 2025, Ipsa ran its first ever citizens’ forum on MPs’ pay and funding, bringing together 23 members of the public to hear from a range of experts about the workings of MPs and Parliament. At the end of the programme, members of the forum published a statement. “We were surprised to learn of the amount that goes on behind the scenes,” it read. “An important lesson… is that, for many people, what MPs do on a daily basis is not at all clear, and this needs to be the starting place for meaningful discussion on MPs’ role, pay and funding.” This was not the first attempt to understand what the public want from their representatives. Several years previously, in 2022, a citizens’ assembly on democracy, run by the Constitution Unit and Involve, recommended that Parliament play a stronger role in scrutinising government policy and legislation. It remains to be seen what effect, if any, these kinds of efforts will have. But both the citizens’ assembly on democracy and Ipsa’s citizens’ forum highlighted the way that better public awareness of what their elected representatives are doing can start to generate useful discussions.
Advertisement
None of this may feel much like a priority when there are so many other urgent challenges to deal with. But we have to question whether a system which often leaves the public frustrated, and is leaving many MPs and staff exhausted and struggling, is serving anybody in the way that they want. As Marcial Boo puts it, “We could carry on like this for decades. But should we?”
Calculating Casework
With the absence of any consistent data on workload, a more creative approach is required to find hard numbers. One way of getting a sense of the scale of the issue is to trawl MPs’ social media accounts, which many use to provide updates on casework.
At the end of 2025, for example, some MPs used Facebook posts to sum up their year in casework. Stuart Anderson, the Conservative MP for South Shropshire, posted that he had dealt with over 9,500 cases during 2025. Up in Halifax, Labour’s Kate Dearden wrote that she had resolved 8,925 cases and responded to 16,764 emails. Dearden’s colleague in Portsmouth South, Stephen Morgan, posted that he’d responded to 21,142 inquiries and handled 11,000 cases. Over in St Albans, the Lib Dems’ Daisy Cooper had resolved over 9,630 cases; Andrew Pakes, Labour (Co-op) MP for Peterborough, over 8,200; and the Conservative James Wild, in North West Norfolk, 6,825.
These were all figures for just one year. Over the course of an MPs’ time in office, the numbers can be eye watering: Luke Evans posted in February 2025 that he had dealt with over 32,500 enquiries since he was first elected Tory MP for Hinckley and Bosworth some 1,900 days before.
Alice Lilly is a senior researcher at The Institute for Government
While her sense of humour is perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind when most of us think of Anna Wintour, she certainly managed to raise a smile while presenting at the 2026 Oscars.
Early on in Sunday night’s ceremony, the long-time Vogue editor came on stage to present two awards with Anne Hathaway.
Anne, of course, is the star of The Devil Wears Prada and its upcoming sequel, both of which feature the character Miranda Priestly, heavily rumoured to have been inspired by Anna.
Introducing the Best Costume Design prize, the Oscar winner told the audience: “A character’s costume is key to telling a story.
Advertisement
“One could argue that one’s wardrobe in real life is also key. Does it make one appear elegant and attractive on, say, the most important night in Hollywood, and say when the most important people in fashion will be judging how one looks?”
Turning to her co-host, she continued: “Anna, just curious, what do you think of my dress tonight?”
By way of response, Anna simply donned her sunglasses and declared: “And the nominees are…”
Following this, the duo then announced the winners for Best Makeup And Hairstyling, with Anna intentionally misnaming her co-presenter “Emily” in an even more explicit nod to The Devil Wears Prada.
Advertisement
LOL at this Devil Wears Prada joke between Anne Hathaway and Anna Wintour while presenting at the Oscars
In the original Devil Wears Prada film and the new follow-up, Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly, the editor of the fictitious Runway magazine, whose look and mannerisms have sparked comparisons with Anna Wintour for two decades now.
“I think that the fashion industry was very sweetly concerned for me about the film that it was gonna paint me in some kind of difficult light.”
Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada
Barry Wetcher/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock
Praising Meryl’s “fantastic” work in the movie, she then insisted: “I found [the film] highly enjoyable and very funny. It had a lot of humour to it, it had a lot of wit.
“I mean, [the actors are] all amazing. And in the end, I thought it was a fair shot.”
However, the icon made a rare exception for her beloved co-star, concluding the tributes with a short blast of The Way We Were’s signature song, which won the Oscar for Best Original Song back in 1974.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house after Barbra’s performance, and that apparently includes those watching along at home…
Babs has me in pieces – best deadies section for years 💔💔💔 #oscars
Fully sobbed when Barbara Streisand came out for Robert Redford Then i pulled myself together And cried when she started singing the way we were#oscars
Before her performance, Barbra recalled: “After I read the first script of The Way We Were, I could only imagine one man in the role and that was Robert Redford. But he turned it down because he said the character had no backbone and didn’t stand for anything. And he was right.
“So, many drafts later, Bob finally agreed to do it. He was a brilliant, subtle actor, and we had a wonderful time playing off each other because we never quite knew what the other one was going to do in a scene. And I’m thrilled that The Way We Were is now considered a classic love story – but it’s also about a dark time in our history, the late 40s and early 50s, when people were informing on each other and subject to loyalty oaths.”
Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were
She continued: “Bob had real backbone – on and off the screen. He spoke up to defend freedom of the press, protect the environment and encouraged new voices at his Sundance Institute, some of whom are up for Oscars tonight, which is so great.
“He was thoughtful and bold. I called him an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail, and won the Academy Award for Best Director. And I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me. He’d call me ‘Babs’, and I’d say, ‘Bob, do I look like a Babs? I’m not a Babs’. But the way he said it made me laugh.
Advertisement
“Many years later, we were chatting on the phone about the usual – politics, art, our favourites – and as we were hanging up, he said, ‘Babs, I love you dearly and I always will’. And in the last note I ever wrote to Bob, I ended it with, ‘I love you, too’. And I signed it ‘Babs’.”
However, on Sunday night, movie history was made when a seventh occurred.
During this year’s ceremony, Marvel star Kumail Nanjiani was welcomed to the stage to announce the winner in the Best Live Action Short category.
After opening the envelope, he revealed that two of the nominees had received the same number of votes from Academy members, meaning they’d each be awarded an Oscar.
Advertisement
“It’s a tie!” he exclaimed, before assuring the audience: “I’m not joking! It’s actually a tie, so everyone calm down!”
Kumail Nanjiani reveals there’s been a tie at the #Oscars while announcing Best Live Action Short, with “The Singers” and “Two People Exchanging Saliva” sharing the award.
He then explained that he’d be announcing the winners one at a time, first welcoming the producers of The Singers to the stage before the crew behind Two People Exchanging Saliva collected theirs.
Advertisement
Uncomfortably, during the latter, the Oscars team attempted to cut the team’s acceptance speech short, before the night’s host Conan O’Brien then encouraged them to continue.
The Oscars’ most famous tie came in 1969, when screen icon Katharine Hepburn and then-newcomer Barbra Streisand split the win for Best Actress for their performances in The Lion In Winter and Funny Girl.
Back in 1932, the first tie at the Oscars came during the awards show’s fifth year, when Fredric March and Wallace Beery were both named Best Actor.
Technically, the former had received one more vote than the latter, but at this time, a rule was in place meaning that anyone within three votes of the winner would also receive an award.
Advertisement
So Much For So Little and A Chance To Live then split Best Documentary Short in 1950, while a similar draw occurred 37 years later when the features Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got and Down And Out In America got the same number of votes in the Best Documentary Feature category.
Trevor and Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life were the two winners in the Best Live-Action Short category in the mid-1990s, while the latest tie was just over a decade ago, in 2013, with Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall winning Best Sound Editing.
Oscars history was made earlier this year, when Sinners became the most-nominated film since the awards show first got going almost a century ago.
Ryan Coogler’s game-changing musical vampire drama scooped 18 nominations in total, ahead of One Battle After Another’s 14 nods.
Film fans will finally find out which movie will come out on top on Sunday night, as the Academy Awards are held in California, with Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Bugonia and yes even KPop Demon Hunters among the other movies to score multiple nominations.
Advertisement
Who were the winners of the top awards at the 2026 Oscars?
The full list of winners from the 2026 Academy Awards is as follows – and make sure you keep checking back over the course of the night, as we’ll be updating our list as more are announced over the course of the night…
Amy Madigan has gone and done the unthinkable – and actually won an Oscar for a horror movie performance.
The veteran actor well and truly stole the show in the 2025 horror film Weapons, creating an iconic and deeply sinister character in Aunt Gladys and inspiring no end of Halloween costumes in the process.
Following an awards season that’s seen Best Supporting Actress prizes going out in a variety of directions, Amy came out on top during Sunday night’s Oscars – joining a rare group of actors including Anthony Hopkins, Ruth Gordon and Kathy Bates who’ve picked up Academy Awards for their horror characters.
In the past, the Academy has been notoriously reluctant to recognise horror performances, with many undeservedly losing out on the night – and others failing to secure a nomination at all.
Advertisement
As we celebrate Amy’s success, here are 13 more performances that deserved more love from the Oscars…
Demi Moore (The Substance)
From the moment we first heard about Demi Moore’s performance in the graphic body horror The Substance, we were already intrigued, and when it finally hit cinemas last year, we couldn’t shout loud enough about how good she was in it.
Over 2025′s awards season, Demi won a Golden Globe, Actor Award and Critics’ Choice Award for her work in The Substance, before finally securing her first Oscar nomination more than 40 years into her career.
In the end, Demi’s work wound up being added to the long list of incredible performances that deserved an Oscar only to miss out – but there’s no question that her nomination marked a huge win for horror recognition at the Oscars.
Ari Aster’s first ever feature film Hereditary takes you on a truly wild ride (we’re still recovering from it seven years later, to be honest with you), and at the centre of it all is Toni Collette’s unbelievable performance.
With her role as tortured matriarch Annie Graham, she brings the deeply unsettling story to life, and showcases her unparalleled versatility as an actor with a performance that takes her character through every emotion under the sun, from unsettled to heartbroken to terrified to furious. And let’s not even talk about that iconic dinner party scene.
Frankly, Toni has been snubbed at the Oscars too many times to count at this point – but it’s interesting that her only nomination to date was actually for her performance in a horror film, when she was recognised for her work in The Sixth Sense.
Advertisement
Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson (The Shining)
Warner Bros/Hawk Films/Kobal/Shutterstock
Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall’s work in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining might now be widely considered two of the finest and most unnerving performances in horror history, but they weren’t so well-received at the time.
Though the reception to the Stephen King adaptation grew warmer as the years went on, critics were pretty lukewarm on it at the time, with Shelley even earning a Worst Actress nomination at the Razzies following its release.
In 2022, this was finally rescinded by the Razzies, who apologised publicly to Shelley Duvall, after learning of director Kubrick’s alleged treatment towards her on set.
Advertisement
Anthony Perkins (Psycho)
There are a few things we think of when someone mentions Psycho. Those infamous high-pitched strings during the iconic shower sequence. The image of the Bates Motel looming in the distance. And, of course, Anthony Perkins’ unsettling portrayal of serial killer Norman Bates.
While Psycho itself was nominated for a string of Oscars the year after its release – including an acting nod for Janet Leigh and Best Director recognition for Alfred Hitchcock – curiously, Anthony Perkins did not make the shortlist for his work in Psycho, despite his portrayal of the slowly unravelling Norman Bates playing such a part in what makes the movie so gripping.
Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out)
Daniel Kaluuya managed a rare feat for the lead in a horror film in 2017 and actually got nominated for an Oscar, which is a testament to the strength of both his performance and the strength of Get Out in general.
But despite getting awards love from the Golden Globes, Baftas, SAG Awards and Academy Awards, none of these translated to a win.
Advertisement
Absolutely no offence to Gary Oldman, or his performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, but as the years go on, it’s becoming clearer which performance is most likely to stand the test of time…
Daniel did eventually pick up an Oscar of his own just three years later, though, thanks to his work in Judas And The Black Messiah.
Sissy Spacek (Carrie)
United Artists/Kobal/Shutterstock
Like Daniel, both Sissy Spacek and her on-screen mum Piper Laurie were both nominated for Oscars for their work in the horror classic Carrie.
Advertisement
Neither of their nominations transferred into a win, but there’s no denying that with her performance, Sissy created an iconic movie character for the ages that we’re still talking about 50 years after the film’s original release.
Florence Pugh (Midsommar)
We’ve already touched on Toni Collette’s much-lauded performance in Hereditary, but there’s another female lead in an Ari Aster project that deserves to be shouted about, too.
In fact, Florence Pugh’s Midsommar performance could well be considered the “yin” to Toni in Hereditary’s “yang”. Both films centre around women who suffer traumatic life events, and struggle to cope as the world around them becomes increasingly more unsettling, although while the latter is shrouded in darkness and shadow, the former takes place in broad sunshine, making the unfolding horror all the more jarring.
The year after Midsommar, Florence did score an Oscar nomination for her performance in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, which probably scuppered her chances of a Best Actress nod for the horror film, which is a bit of a shame, as her emotionally-charged work in Ari Aster’s film was every bit as deserving, if not more.
Advertisement
Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby)
HAHA/Cinema Publishers/The Hollywood/Shutterstock
Often cited as one of the best horror films of all time, Rosemary’s Baby landed two Oscar nominations following its release, including a Best Supporting Actress win for Ruth Gordon.
But given everything she had to do in the title role, it feels a little surprising in the present day that the Academy would go as far as celebrating Rosemary’s Baby back in 1969, without actually giving its leading star Mia Farrow a nomination.
Lupita Nyong’o (Us)
Advertisement
Lupita Nyong’o in Us
C Barius/Universal/ILM/Kobal/Shutterstock
By the time Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out came along, the world was ready for more from the Oscar-winning screenwriter, particularly as Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o was on double duty playing two halves of the same whole.
Now, we appreciate that audiences and critics didn’t quite take to Us in the same way they did to Get Out, but we stand by it being an excellent film, and for everything Lupita was able to do with two completely opposing characters, we still think it’s a shame she never secured her second Oscar nomination for it.
Interestingly, her peers in the Screen Actors’ Guild did nominate for her performance that year, though the Best Actress title would ultimately end up going to Renée Zellweger for Judy, as did the Oscar.
Hugh Grant (Heretic)
Advertisement
Say what you want about Heretic (to be honest, we still think of it as one of our biggest cinema disappointments of 2024, after a trailer that promised so much), but there’s no arguing with Hugh Grant’s transformative performance as the chilling Mr Reed, putting his charm to work in ways we never saw in his many rom-coms of yore.
The Fly may have won an Oscar in the Best Makeup category back in 1987 (which, interestingly enough, was fellow sci-fi body horror The Substance’s only win in 2025), but its Saturn Award-winning lead performance from Jeff Goldblum did not transfer to an Oscar nomination.
We get it, a film about a half-man, half-fly was always going to be a hard sell to the Academy, but Jeff’s performance is still being talked about almost 40 years later.
Advertisement
Despite his expansive career, the Wicked star has, in fact, never been nominated for an Oscar for acting, although he was nominated as the director of the short film Little Surprises in the mid-1990s.
Tilda Swinton (Suspiria)
Tilda Swinton in Suspiria
It’s been seven years, and we’re still not sure we understand exactly what went on in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria. But what we do remember is that Tilda Swinton played about 20 different characters, disappearing into each role as flawlessly as you’d expect, and received absolutely zip the following awards season.
Despite four Golden Globe nods and three from the Baftas, Tilda has just one Oscar nomination to her name, which was the same year she won for Michael Clayton.
There are widespread fears that energy bills could skyrocket later in the year, affecting Britons’ cost of living.
“It’s moments like this that tell you what a government is about,” the prime minister is expected to say in a press conference on Monday.
Advertisement
“My answer is clear. Whatever challenges lie ahead, this government will always support working people.
“That is my first instinct – my first priority – to help you with the cost of living through this crisis.”
He will outline plans to help the public using heating oil to warm their homes.
The PM is expected to address concerns that suppliers are cancelling orders and increasing prices, too.
Advertisement
He is expected to say: “I will not tolerate companies trying to exploit this crisis to make money from working people.
“…if the companies have broken the law, there will be legal action.”
The government has also promised to work with international allies to try and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran continues to block the major oil shipping lane.
The prime minister will say: “We will continue to work towards a swift resolution of the situation in the Middle East.
Advertisement
“Because there is no question that ending the war is the quickest way to reduce the cost of living.”
US president Donald Trump asked Britain and other allies to send warships to keep Hormuz open on Saturday.
He also claimed “we don’t need” British aircraft carriers in the region.
Advertisement
In response to Trump’s latest request, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “As we’ve said previously, we are currently discussing with our allies and partners a range of options to ensure the security of shipping in the region.”
He also distanced the UK from Trump’s decision to ease sanctions on Russia in a bid to help the global oil trade.
“We’ve not lifted our sanctions against Russia because it is very, very important that we continue to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people,” Miliband said.
Advertisement
“This was an illegal invasion launched more than four years ago. Our solidarity with the Ukrainian people has been incredibly important throughout these four years.”
Each year the Academy Awards affords the film industry the opportunity to recognise the biggest achievements of the last 12 months – but let’s face it, for many of us, the annual event is more about the red carpet than anything else.
Advertisement
And if that’s the category you fall into, you’ll be pleased to hear that between the nominees, presenters, performers and other famous guests who managed to sneak their way onto the guestlist, this year’s Oscars has proved to be as star-studded as ever.
Here are all the A-list photos you need to see from the 2026 Oscars red carpet – and make sure you keep checking back because we’ll be updating our round-up as more famous guests make their grand entrances…
Jessie Buckley
Nominated – Best Actress
Advertisement
Chase Infiniti
Rose Byrne
Nominated – Best Actress
Hudson Williams
Renate Reinsve
Nominated – Best Actress
Wagner Moura
Wagner Moura arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
So there I was, catching snippets of the West Ham v Manchester City match on my phone, while also watching Kemi Badenoch and Theresa May strutting their funky stuff to a live performance by Nicole Scherzinger, followed by Rory Bremner playing Bruce Forsyth in PLAY YOUR CARDS RIGHT, ably assisted by Holly Willoughby. Could my life get any weirder?
The occasion was Lord Ashcroft’s eightieth birthday bash at the Grosvenor House hotel on London’s Park Lane. What an evening it turned out to be. I had been to three of these events before and the one thing I knew was to expect the unexpected. In previous years the cabaret live entertainment had included Kylie Minogue, the Jersey Boys, Lionel Ritchie., Michael Buble, Lulu, Cliff Richard, Denise Van Outen, Jasper Carrott, the Band of the Scots Guards, Tom Jones. I have a particular memory of being on the dance floor, boogying away to Kylie, when…. on second thoughts, you’ll have to wait for my autobiography for that particular juicy anecdote! Only a few months to wait!
Advertisement
I got up yesterday feeling terrible, and full of cold. But there was no way I was going to miss an Ashcroft party. So mid-afternoon on went the dinner suit, which for the first time was quite loose fitting. My friend Dan and his wife Laura were going to see COME ALIVE in Earls Court, so they drove me to the Grosvenor House and collected me afterwards. Here are Laura and I dressed up to the nines!
At the pre-dinner drinks reception I had some nice chats with various Tory luminaries including Sajid and Laura Javid, James and Susie Cleverly, Mark Francois and Mark Wallace who now runs Total Politics and Biteback. And then Liz Truss and her husband Hugh appeared, and we had a very entertaining exchange for quite some time. She was very relaxed and funny and declared I wasn’t right wing enough to appear on her Youtube show, and then tested me on my ‘soundness’. And with that we all trooped into the ballroom to sit down for dinner.
Advertisement
I was sitting far nearer the stage than on previous occasions, with Mark Wallace’s wife Isabella and Caroline Craig (wife of Sky News chief political correspondent, Jon) sitting either side of me. I first met Caroline back in 1985 when I was working in Parliament and she was working for Norfolk MP Richard Ryder. People tried to match us off. How different our lives might have been! She now runs Nigel Farage’s Westminster office and remains an absolute hoot.
Rory Bremner compered the whole evening and did a superb job, littered with impressions old and new. He does a brilliant takeoff of Donald Trump and was a master at judging how far he could push the audience’s boundaries. The highlight was a Peter O’Sullivan commentary of the first eighteen months of Labour in government. Political satire at its best.
Before the meal, Rory introduced the first, which we all assumed was a Queen tribute act, until an AI version of Michael Ashcroft appeared on screen singing ‘Don’t Stop Me Know’. It was a bit like the Abba Voyage holograms.
After the starter, we were entertained by a brilliant Ukrainian choir, who Michael has got to know, and help fund, on his various trips to Ukraine. They were then joined on stage by Katherine Jenkins. When the choir performed their first song, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Advertisement
Next up was an audience participation game of ‘Play Your Cards Right’, with Rory Bremner becoming Bruce Forsyth with Holly Willoughby playing the role of glamorous assistant. You had to be there… She has some great comic timing.
After the main course, Nicole Scherzinger performed four songs including ‘Diamonds are Forever, a song from ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and the Pussycat Dolls classic ‘Don’t Cha’. Three tables over from me, I spied Kemi Badenoch on her feet dancing away, and two tables being me, Theresa May was also really giving it some! Kemi later told me the song was one of her favourites when she was at university, so she immediately leapt to her feet. Nigel Farage, who was on the same table, stayed resolutely in his seat!
A highlight of these events has always been a speech by William Hague, and again he lived up to expectations. He was followed by Michael himself, who was clearly quite moved by the occasion. He was also very funny, but had three important things to tell the audience. Firstly, that he had just been awarded the Ukraine Order of Merit for all his work supporting the cause of Ukrainian freedom. He worse the medal around his neck the whole evening. His support for various Ukrainian charities, both military and civilian, has helped thousands of Ukrainians survive the hell of the last four years. Indeed, the audience were urged to donate to Olena Zelenska’s Cayo Foundation, which distributes monies to charities all over Ukraine.
Michael went on to announced that General Keith Kellog would be publishing his book with Biteback, but left the best to last. Last year the Imperial War Museum announced that after 15 years, it would be closing the Lord Ashcroft Gallery, which has been displaying his unique collection of Victoria and George Crosses. Frankly, it was an outrageous decision by the IWM and made for the most woke of reasons – the collection wasn’t ‘diverse’ enough, and they wanted to use the space for things other than honouring bravery. Idiots. Anyway. last night Michael announced that the collection had found a new home – at the National Army Museum in Chelsea. The audience roared their approval.
Advertisement
After his speech there was a series of happy birthday video messages including from Olena Zelenska, General Kellogg, Scott Morrison, Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott, as well as a number of Ukrainian MPs including my friend Oleksei Gonchorenko.
And then it was time for us all to speculate on who the final act of the evening might be. When the curtain went back the shock throughout the ballroom was palpable. It was Sir Elton John! There. Live, a few feet from us. Yet another audience roar ensued, as the opening bars of SATURDAY NIGHT rang out. He is a master entertainer and we were all spellbound, as he sang Tiny Dancer, Benny and the Jets, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues, Candle in the Wind, and several more.
What a night. It was a truly unique experience, and I was honoured to have been invited.
