Photo by Roberto Schmidt/ AFP via Getty Images
So it’s out in the open. The battle is on. Two sides eye each other with malevolence and anger. Propaganda submerges the media. On what happens next, the future leadership of the country hangs. Already, blood has been shed.
Blood has been shed? Indeed, because I am talking about the events that matter most to Britain’s political future. These are, of course, those chilling confrontations in Minneapolis in which civilians are protesting against the presence of Ice, the US’s paramilitary force, in the city.
Events might occur below the surface of ordinary political consciousness that have an abnormal, game-changing effect even years later. They may be held in the voter’s mind by an image – in this case, that of the bereft five-year-old Liam Ramos with his floppy-ear woollen hat, about to be deported to Texas.
I know Reform is channelling the anti-liberal-establishment energy of Maga. I know how popular this is. I know how angry millions of British voters are about migrants. I know that Nigel Farage possesses a kind of political genius Labour can’t match.
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But I also suspect that across Britain, millions of people have been watching the killings, the anger, the violence and the chaos in Minneapolis – caused by a politics that sees division as the lesson of modern times – and recoil from it. There is a problem here for Reform. Do we want masked men with guns patrolling east London, Bristol or Birmingham? Deep down, minds might be changing already.
Without being pompous or pious, it might be nice if Labour, now that Keir Starmer has broken with Donald Trump, was talking of this.
Leading questions
But, as the acute will have noticed, other things are going on. So, a few thoughts on the Labour leadership struggle. I have been at large in the country, picking up snippets and unconsidered trifles. (The consumption of pastry, many mugs of tea and the occasional haggis might have been involved.)
The possibility of a stubborn Starmer staying and eventually winning a second election is, says one cabinet member, still underpriced. And however incendiary, the NEC’s recent decision to block Andy Burnham from standing as a candidate for the upcoming parliamentary by-election in Gorton and Denton, should not have been a surprise. For Starmer had this choice: either welcome the fox into the hen house and shortly thereafter vanish in a cloud of bloody feathers, or infuriate soft-left MPs and easily bored journalists. He decided after five seconds’ deep thought to keep his job. My jaw is on the carpet.
Or rather, Starmer chose to keep his job for now, because he doesn’t have complete agency. Moves against him are likely. Many Labour leaders in Scotland and Wales believe it’s too late for a change of leader to help them. But the Prime Minister could always unwittingly bring things forward. He could, for instance, listen to left-wing MPs and right-wing journalists and idiotically sack Wes Streeting.
Streeting would still be a problem if Starmer followed that advice. And soon every cabinet minister, every MP, may still have to decide: Keir or Wes?
Picture this
I’ve spent a lot of time recently in both the National Gallery (where I’m a trustee), which is glowing from its rehang and extension, and in the National Gallery of Scotland, whose rooms are finer and brighter than ever. But a word in favour of the local. Kirkcaldy Galleries, which was created in 1925 as a memorial to those lost in the First World War, celebrated its centenary last year.
Its small collection is beautifully exhibited, with clever pairings and contrasts of work, and the curators change their minds about what to show depending on what the public wants to see – remarkable. It has comfortable chairs. I was brought there as a boy by my mother, decided I wanted to be a painter and still spend at least part of each day making pictures. I learned this week it was the same with Jack Vettriano, the sneered-at, hugely successful painter, who died last year in Nice. That’s the thing about galleries: like public libraries, they are very quiet and it can seem as if nothing’s happening. Yet they also set off tiny sparks that can be blazing decades later.
A conflict of interest
Returning to this week’s theme of bloody conflict, Kirkcaldy was also the scene of the last fatal duel in Scotland 200 years ago. It began with a blow from an umbrella in the high street and ended with the assailant, an aggressive ex-soldier, being shot in the head. There was apparently a saying at the time about these early morning affairs: “Coffee for two, Champagne for one.” Very Labour, 2026.
[Further reading: How do you solve a problem like Whitehall?]
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