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Private rented sector reform has been on the policy agenda in various forms for more than a decade. Successive governments consulted, announced and delayed. The current reforms bring that long journey to a decisive conclusion, cementing a framework that will govern private renting in …

Fertilisers, fuel, feed, labour and finance have all seen material increases in cost compared with the pre-pandemic period. While the acute spikes associated with the 2022 energy crisis have subsided, prices remain elevated on a structural basis. Producers of arable crops face higher fertiliser …

This essay attempts that examination. It proceeds, in twenty-three parts, from the exact text of the pledge through the legal architecture that would govern its implementation to the operational, fiscal, diplomatic and political consequences the pledge would entail. It does not seek to condemn …

Those warnings did not stop the appointment. Nor, according to the picture now emerging across Whitehall and both Houses of Parliament, did they materially reshape it. What the warnings did do, however, was establish a paper trail — one that has since become the …

This long essay argues, in ten parts, that the Mandelson affair is not an anomaly within the Starmer project but a faithful expression of it. The affair’s pathologies — an over-reliance on procedure as a substitute for political judgement; a centralised decision-making ecology that …

The former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office — the most senior civil servant in the British diplomatic establishment — is now expected to make just such a break. According to multiple accounts from sources familiar with the former official’s intentions, …

This is not a political tract. The Act is on the statute book. Its commencement dates are phased, its substantive provisions are in force or imminent, and the supporting machinery — the Private Rented Sector Database, the new Ombudsman for the sector, the amended …