I represent one of the most beautiful constituencies in England. Banbury, Chipping Norton, Charlbury, and the North Oxfordshire villages are places where people choose to live, work, and raise families precisely because of their character. As a local MP, I understand instinctively the impulse to protect what we have. But
(📸 ABC News/ Che Chorley) In 2021, a campaign in a suburban shopping centre of South Australia emerged from a collective of angry retail workers. The shopping centre had started charging workers $30 a day to park. It meant most were parking off site, walking late at night after work
For the first time in Israel’s history, this week the government passed a budget in election year. Passage of the bill avoided immediately triggering elections and now means they will take place closer to the October deadline. The NIS 850.6 billion (approximately £203.5bn) spending package is unprecedented in scale. Not
Europe faces a critical and urgent defence readiness gap. The War in Ukraine has led to a necessary reckoning by European governments of their capacity to prepare for and respond to a range of security threats, while the conflict in the Gulf has underlined that we are destined to live
Critics of our Labour government say it has no “vision.” Starmer, they say, has abandoned hope in favour of cold pragmatism. Labour should have a vision that brings hope to people and not crush hope with hard matter-of-factness. This criticism is erroneous. The error may arise from a lack of
Like a phoenix rising the people of former “socialist republic of South Yorkshire” now have their own transport network I will put my cards on the table – I am a massive fan of public transport. Some of this was born out of necessity. I didn’t get a car until
I was there (almost) at the beginning of Progress. In those first days in 1996 it was Derek Draper and Kate Dixon; then I turned up, initially as an intern, to process the backlog of magazine subscriptions and somehow stayed. I remember my “interview” with Kate as not really an
Consider the following scenario: a marketing executive takes on a large new client and needs to scale up their advertising operations. They face a choice between two options: they can employ a person, or they can pay a subscription for an AI agent. But our tax system means the playing
London’s local elections in 2026 are shaping up to be some of the most volatile in a generation. While the capital is often labelled a “Labour city,” the reality on the ground is far messier. Labour is under pressure from multiple directions: Reform on the right, and the Greens and
We are reaching a tipping point. Around the world, democracy is under assault from a combination of disinformation on social media, an emboldened far-right, and economic inequalities fuelling dissatisfaction with the status quo. Outdated institutions are dying hard and fast, and Westminster’s voting system is one of them. Academics and
