Mark Webber reflects on the key outcomes of last week’s NATO summit in Ankara.

Task proliferation is not a criticism one can any longer level at NATO. The alliance has spent the last two years stripping itself of responsibilities and political missions it once regarded as essential. The issues of climate change or Women, Peace and Security (WPS) still have their adherents within the NATO bureaucracy, but neither figured in the business of last week’s Ankara summit (or, indeed, at last year’s Hague summit). A shared interest among allies in out-of-area missions, meanwhile, evaporated with the frantic withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. NATO’s training mission in Iraq decamped from Baghdad to Naples in March. KFOR still helps keep the peace in Kosovo –but rumours abound that its American contingent will soon be pulled and the mission transferred to EU oversight (much like EUFOR in Bosnia). Even China, a NATO agenda item introduced by the first Trump administration and sustained under Joe Biden, is currently missing in action. It is absent from (the admittedly short) Ankara summit declaration and was mentioned only fleetingly by Secretary General Mark Rutte in his many summit remarks. A concern with ‘the persistent threat of terrorism’ remains, but only out of deference to Turkey, the summit host.

As the summit declaration makes clear, NATO is concentrating on the basics of collective defence – ‘counter[ing] the long-term threat [of] Russia’ and, by extension, offering ‘unwavering support for Ukraine.’ By demonstrating the Europeans (and Canada) can discharge those two tasks, NATO fulfils a third – keeping a sceptical United States constructively engaged in a complex process of NATO ‘Europeanisation.’ The leitmotif here is ‘a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO’ – a process whereby European allies assume more responsibility in the traditionally US-dominated NATO command structure while also shouldering a greater material burden of common defence.

Getting this right is a matter, first, of political art. At Ankara, President Donald Trump was mollified and indulged in equal measure. Allied leaders and the Secretary General took on the chin Trump’s opening press conference salvoes – that the NATO allies had not backed the United States over the war with Iran, that they were still deficient on defence spending and that Greenland should come under American control. On these matters, there was little public pushback, hence little argument. Trump, in the words of John Bew, was held in check by a ‘controlled explosion.’ Further, the American president was the subject of a collective encomium performed by allied prime ministers and presidents. Trump departed Ankara praising the love and unity he had witnessed.
As for the practicalities, here the hard work was carried out well before the summit. America’s preferred model of European security – a ‘NATO 3.0’ in which America’s ‘allies […] step up and assume primary responsibility for the conventional defence of Europe’ – had been flagged by Under Secretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby in February. This ‘rightsizing’ of America’s commitment was, on paper at least, completed in short order. NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Alexis Grynkewich, declared in early July that the ‘European allies [had] largely filled the gaps left by U.S. reductions to the NATO Force Model.’

This process of substitution still has a long way to run. The gaps filled, currently sit in a force-generation spreadsheet – and some of these commitments represent pledges of future effort not an ability to deliver in the present. Even with ramped up defence spending, industry on both sides of the Atlantic is struggling to keep up with demand. The summit’s Defence Industry Forum – a carefully-staged PR event of announcements and contract-signings – provided, nonetheless, evidence of the scale of ambition. The development of deep-strike capabilities, integrated air and missile defences, air-to-air refuelling, satellite and aerial surveillance, and the safeguarding of critical materials are all intended, in the words of the summit’s Strategy for Industry-NATO Cooperation,  ‘to ensure that the capabilities required for NATOʼs deterrence and defence can be effectively generated, scaled and sustained.’

The timelines for these projects run years into the future. Delivery depends on maintaining high defence budgets (still a test for fiscally challenged governments in France, Italy and the UK). And integrating these new capabilities within NATO’s force and command structures and defence planning process – already complex enough – will have to be done in accordance with an unprecedented premise: the replacement of ‘the US “backbone’” in European deterrence.’

Out of necessity, NATO is gravitating toward a ‘high minimum’ – garnering the forces necessary to achieve its most basic of tasks and ignoring those which are secondary.  For all its seeming simplicity, this will entail something other than moving NATO back, in Colby’s imagining, to version 1.0 of the Cold War.  That NATO was sustained by persistent American leadership (now in doubt), British fortitude and reliability (also in doubt) and German quiescence (a thing of the past). The NATO of the near future will accommodate Germany as the coming European power, partner with Ukraine as Europe’s most formidable fighting force and defence innovator, and cooperate with the European Union as an agent of defence procurement and defence industry integration.

Following the Cold War, it was often argued that NATO required new tasks and new responsibilities to keep it relevant. That argument is rarely heard today.  NATO has been forced back to basics by Russian belligerence and fear of American abandonment. That course is now set for the foreseeable future. It seems unlikely there will be a NATO summit in 2027. With no new political deliverables, one may not be needed.

By Mark Webber, Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham.

(David Crausby / Alamy)

4 min read38 min

What marks out this research is that, alongside analysing the data, we listened to children and young people describe their experience of growing up in today’s education system. We heard parents talk about the hopes they have for their children, and listened to teachers, school leaders, employers and community organisations trying to make a difference in exceptionally challenging circumstances.

For much of the past three decades, education policy has rightly focused on narrowing gaps in attainment and expanding opportunity. We should recognise how much progress has been made. Outcomes have improved for many groups of children. More young people now leave education with opportunities that simply did not exist a generation ago.

But one uncomfortable truth remains. White working class children continue to experience some of the weakest educational outcomes in England. This isn’t a new problem, nor one that has been ignored. Schools, governments and charities have all tried to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children. Yet despite these efforts, progress for this particular group has remained frustratingly limited.

The temptation is to search for a single explanation. Some argue aspirations are too low, others point to poverty, while others blame schools or families. Our Inquiry suggests the reality is considerably more complicated. We found parents who cared deeply about their children’s education and wanted them to succeed. We found teachers working tirelessly on behalf of their pupils. We found children who wanted successful futures.

What we also found, though, was a growing disconnect between many white working class communities and the education system. Again and again, we heard families questioning whether education still offered the certainty of opportunity it once had. Many parents spoke about struggling to see how success at school connected to the lives their children were likely to lead. Many young people told us they found it difficult to understand why what they were learning mattered to their future.

This should concern us all. Not because any one political party or government is responsible, but because confidence in education is essential if families are to believe it can still improve their children’s lives.

That is why I hope our report is read as an invitation to think differently. This isn’t about ranking disadvantage or suggesting one group matters more than another. Poverty remains the greatest predictor of poor educational outcomes across every ethnic group. But good policymaking means paying attention to where disadvantage persists, understanding why, and responding accordingly.

Neither is this simply about exam results. Throughout the Inquiry we heard about belonging, confidence, relationships, transitions, careers guidance, local opportunity and helping young people see a future worth striving for. Educational success is about much more than qualifications alone.

Nor is this a criticism of schools. One of the most hopeful aspects of our work was visiting schools and colleges already achieving strong outcomes for white working class pupils. Their success reminds us that poor outcomes are not inevitable.

The recommendations we have published deliberately form a long-term agenda rather than a short-term programme. Some could be implemented relatively quickly, while others will require investment, structural reform and sustained commitment over many years. That is inevitable. Problems that have developed over generations cannot be solved overnight.

But if there is one lesson I hope politicians of every party take from this Inquiry, it is that improving outcomes for white working class children should not be a partisan cause. It should be a national one. Every child deserves to believe that education is for them, that their efforts matter, and that success is achievable regardless of where they grow up. That is an ambition surely worth uniting around.

Baroness Morris is a Labour peer and co-chair of the Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes

6 min read19 min

Florence Eshalomi, who was a London Assembly Member before entering the House of Commons, said doing so would help London “work with all the regions to support economic growth”.

Burnham will officially replace Keir Starmer in Downing Street next week after a large majority of Labour MPs nominated the former Greater Manchester mayor to take over. Starmer will answer his final PMQs today (Wednesday) before a formal handover on Monday.

Burnham, who will be the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade, has pledged to accelerate the devolution of power away from Westminster and Whitehall, “putting it in the hands of the people and places who can use it best, and in so doing creating a new sense of agency, possibility and hope flowing around the country”. 

Central to his “Manchesterism” agenda is expanding the Downing Street operation and locating part of it in Manchester. ‘No 10 in the North’ will be the “nerve centre of a rewired Britain”, Burnham, who was elected the MP for Makerfield last month, has said.

The Parliamentary Labour Party broadly supports Burnham’s mission to shift power away from London as it seeks to combat the electoral threats posed by Reform UK and the Greens.

However, there is unease among some Labour MPs that the heavy focus on Manchester risks overlooking other parts of the country facing serious economic and social challenges.

At the same time, Labour MPs in the capital have urged the incoming PM to ensure that a greater focus on the city where he served as mayor does not come at the expense of London and the South East. As well as being crucial to the national economy, the capital has poverty of its own that should not be ignored, they argue.

As part of that push, two Labour MPs in London have told PoliticsHome that Burnham should appoint a minister for London when he assembles his first cabinet.

The role was last held by former Conservative MP Greg Hands in 2024, with Starmer deciding not to carry it forward when he entered power two years ago. The role is traditionally used when the London mayor is of a different political party to the party in government. The former is currently Labour’s Sadiq Khan.

Margaret Mullane, Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham, said: “London often gets overlooked as it’s the economic hub of the country. But in seats like Dagenham and Rainham there are high levels of deprivation, and there are many other areas in the capital like it.

“When we had a shadow London minister, there was a central voice in Parliament speaking for areas like mine. Bringing this position back can only be a benefit.”

Eshalomi, the Labour MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, added: “Andy is committed to ensuring that London and the rest of the country successfully support the challenge of the new government.

“This will work if we revitalise the important role of the minister for London to work with all the regions to support economic growth.”

Hands, previously a Tory MP in London, was positive about the idea of bringing back the position, arguing that it can “help the communication” between the London mayor and the PM. However, he added: “It would have to be done in a way that Sadiq Khan and the PM thought was helpful; if either are opposed, then they will just ignore that role.”

TheCityUK, which represents the financial services sector, said the incoming Labour government’s wider devolution agenda must include “a lens” focused “on powering up London’s economic strength and reflecting its role in nationwide growth”.

“As the hub for the UK’s world-class international financial centre, London plays a central role in creating jobs, investment and tax revenue. It also connects businesses, talent and capital with regional and national hubs across the UK,” said CEO Miles Celic OBE.

Burnham described London as “the world’s greatest capital city” in a speech late last month.

On Monday night, a week before becoming prime minister, Burnham met virtually with Labour MPs to take questions about his plans for power.

According to those present, he sought to reassure Labour backbenchers that his devolution agenda would focus on all parts of the country and hinted at creating a minister for coastal communities.

The Labour Rural Research Group has this week published a report arguing that rural communities have an important role in delivering economic growth, and cautioned Burnham against urban bias in his devolution plans. 

Labour MP for Rushcliffe and vice-chair of the group, James Naish, said: “Rural communities shouldn’t be seen as peripheral to national renewal; rather, they are places where growth can be generated, productivity unlocked and national priorities delivered.

“The next phase of Labour in government should, therefore, recognise rural economies not simply as areas requiring support, but as strategic assets capable of driving growth.”

Perran Moon, the Labour MP for the coastal seat of Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall, has issued one of the strongest public warnings to the incoming Burnham administration about the risk of overlooking parts of the country like his.

“We’re at a really delicate moment,” he told PoliticsHome.

“Either we can reignite the north-south debate, or we can have a more sophisticated, nuanced approach to the challenges faced in inner cities vs suburban vs rural vs remote coastal communities.”

He continued: “There are significant challenges and opportunities in each, but they are different. They require separate approaches and in some cases, separate devolution arrangements.

“The concern has to be that the incoming administration has not quite got its collective head around the fact that Labour isn’t an exclusively urban party anymore. In fact, Labour doesn’t get re-elected without our rural and coastal MPs. 

“So we need to dial down the regional division and significantly dial up engagement with areas where there may be a preconceived stereotype of what life is really like for those communities.

A Labour MP in a different coastal constituency was more positive about ‘Manchesterism’. They suggested that some of their colleagues were taking the term too literally, telling PoliticsHome it is “just a word for a politics which recognises that growth has to be driven locally, with local and national government making the right interventions to enable it.

“That can apply in areas like mine every bit as much (if not more) as in Manchester.”

In politics, there is often an assumption that if we see a problem, more regulation is the answer. Sometimes it is.

But good policymaking is not just about intentions. It is about consequences.

As Parliament continues to debate gambling reform, we should ask a simple question: are we making consumers safer, or are we creating conditions that make it easier for illegal operators to thrive?

That question matters even more during a major sporting event like the World Cup.

Millions of people are following the tournament and many will place a bet as part of enjoying the football. The overwhelming majority will do so safely and responsibly. The challenge for policymakers is ensuring they do so in a regulated market, with protections and safeguards in place, rather than drifting towards illegal operators who offer none.

As the MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, I have spent more time than most thinking about these issues. The largest private employer in my constituency is bet365, which supports around 5,500 jobs. But I am not writing this to plead the industry’s case.

As it happens, I do not gamble much myself, other than perhaps a flutter on the Grand National because it is something I used to do with my grandad and remains a fond memory.

What concerns me is whether we are paying enough attention to the unintended consequences of regulation and taxation, particularly when it comes to the growing black market.

The regulated betting sector in Britain operates under some of the strictest standards in the world. Licensed operators are required to carry out age verification checks, anti-money laundering controls and safer gambling interventions. They contribute to the economy, support jobs and sport, and fund the new industry statutory levy, which is delivering over £100 million each year for research, prevention and treatment services.

Illegal operators do none of those things.

They do not carry out meaningful checks. They do not contribute to sport. They do not pay tax in Britain. Most importantly, they do not care whether a customer is vulnerable, underage or experiencing gambling harm.

Yet many consumers simply do not know the difference.

We all carry smartphones in our pockets. Within a few clicks, anyone can find themselves on an offshore gambling site. It may look legitimate. The odds may look attractive. But the protections that exist in the regulated market often disappear entirely.

That should concern all of us.

And the evidence suggests this is not a marginal problem. Independent analysis by global market intelligence firm WARC found unregulated operators now account for almost half of all gambling advertising spend in Britain. Separate forecasts from H2 Gambling Capital estimate that the amount staked with illegal operators could rise from £17 billion this year to more than £33 billion by 2028.

The direction of travel should worry policymakers. A growing black market means more consumers exposed to unregulated operators, less money flowing into British sport and public services, and fewer opportunities to intervene when people need support.

The challenge for policymakers is not whether gambling should be regulated. It absolutely should.

The real question is whether we are regulating in a way that keeps consumers in the safer, regulated market, or whether we are unintentionally pushing some towards the black market.

That is not a theoretical concern. The Office for Budget Responsibility has already warned about the potential for movement towards unregulated operators. We have seen similar challenges emerge overseas, including in the Netherlands. We should learn from those lessons rather than repeat them.

This is not just a challenge for DCMS. It should be a priority for the Treasury too.

Every pound staked with an illegal operator is a pound beyond UK consumer protections. It is a pound that contributes nothing to British sport and nothing to the public finances.

At a time when Ministers are rightly focused on economic growth, consumer protection and supporting public services, that should matter. The World Cup is a reminder of what is at stake.

The challenge for Government is not simply to regulate more. It is to regulate better.

That means continuing to improve protections, while ensuring consumers remain in the regulated market rather than being pushed towards illegal operators who operate beyond the reach of British law.

If well-intentioned policies end up driving more consumers towards the black market, everybody loses.

Consumers lose. Sport loses. The Treasury loses.

And the criminal operators win.

Gareth Snell is the Labour and Co-operative MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central.

Sam Collins is Head of Public Affairs for Popular Conservatism.

Can you build a broad church without solid foundations?

That is one of the questions that the Conservative Party has refused to face for over a decade and that Kemi, with steely resolve, is finally forcing us to answer. As it now stands, only those who are willing to support and defend key planks of party policy – leaving the ECHR and unpicking the most harmful aspects of the Net Zero agenda – will be allowed to stand as Conservative candidates.

This is unquestionably brave from Kemi, and (as cogently argued by Oliver Dean in these pages yesterday) a key step to proving to voters, particularly deeply suspicious Reform switchers, that we as a Party have changed.

This has naturally provoked conniptions among those who disagree with the policy shift. Fortunately, so far at least, open opposition seems to be concentrated among former MPs like David Gauke, Peers like Gavin Barwell and small internal party groups like Prosper UK rather than sitting MPs. It is difficult to know exactly what to say to those opposed to Kemi’s article, as it is hard to discern what their specific opposition is beyond ‘I don’t like this shift in policy’. To cover this lack of meaningful objections, they coat their opposition in the idea that the Party needs to remain a ‘broad church’.

I don’t want to rule out the broad church approach entirely. Differences of opinion are not automatically bad.

Allowing some deviation prevents our MPs becoming brainless automatons doing nothing but repeating central office talking point (like some other parties we could mention). And, after all, almost no one could truthfully say that they have agreed with every single policy in every single area that our party has stood on since the 2010 election. Not least (as per Sir Humphrey) in order to have passionately believed in all the many U-turns and reversals over that period one would have to have been a “stark, staring, raving schizophrenic”! So we must accept some different opinions if we want to gather together the necessary amount of support to form a government.

But unfortunately many in the Party have reached the point where ecumenicalism ceases being a means to the end of building a large enough coalition to bring about robust Conservative change, and becomes an end in and of itself. A political party cannot (or should not) be merely a vehicle for those seeking power, but instead is a way to bring together people of a similar ideological viewpoint in order to maximise the chances of enacting policies that advance those ideological goals.

This cannot stand in an era where the road to a Conservative recovery lies as much in creating the belief that we will actually do what we promise as it does in choosing the right policies to champion. To enact our agenda, we will need a parliamentary party who can – and more importantly will – deliver on the promises being made. Leaving the ECHR, unpicking the most harmful elements of Net Zero and scrapping public sector equality duties would go a long way to achieving key tenets of the PopCon agenda. In the spirit of a broad church and open debate, however, I would say we could yet go further!

It is therefore grimly ironic that one of the areas we have not yet agreed to seriously tackle – the rest of the Equality Act – is one that could stymie Kemi’s whole plan to reshape the Conservative Parliamentary Party.

One hesitates to give Lord Barwell and potentially others ideas (although I have little doubt that enterprising members of the legal profession have already reached out) but recent legal cases make for deeply concerning reading for anyone truly interested in forcing specific policy views on to candidates.

But first, a little history. The Equality Act 2010 was introduced to consolidate previous legislation and case law to protect people with specific characteristics from being discriminated against for those characteristics. These include gender, race and sexual identity. One additional characteristic was “belief” so long as the belief was genuine, beyond mere opinion, weighty, cogent and respectable. This, incidentally, was a holdover from the previous Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulation 2003, showing once again that those claiming that it is easy to unpick these issues are generally failing to see how deeply they are embedded in British legal and political life.

The employment tribunals then got their hands on this protected characteristic and have, perhaps unsurprisingly, taken it well beyond the confines of the original intentions of the authors. A 2010 case (Grainger PLC v Nicholson) ruled that a belief in climate change could be a protected characteristic, meaning that discrimination for views on the topic could lead to significant payouts from employers.

We might be tempted to just roll our eyes and tut at judicial overreach were it not for a much more recent and concerning case. Natalie Bird, former Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, won a case in 2024 against the Party after she was unceremoniously deselected due to her gender critical views. We might applaud this as a victory for free speech, one vanishingly rare inside a party that long ceased to be particularly liberal or democratic.

But we should also see the risk of these two cases combined. A belief in climate change is a protected characteristic. The judiciary effectively have told a political party that they have no right to discriminate against candidates due to their opposition to established party policy if it goes against their deeply held philosophical beliefs. It does not take a genius to see the potential for these two decisions to be weaponised against any attempt to ensure ideological selection of candidates.

Kemi has taken a brave and prudent step by dragging the Parliamentary Party onto serious intellectual and ideological foundations. But she and her team must ensure that the unelected judiciary does not have an opportunity to stymie it.

And maybe the Conservatives should widen our planned reappraisal of the Equality Act.