Politics

Nato marks its 75th birthday today, but the alliance is in no mood for celebration.  At its foundation, and for much of its lifetime, Nato worked well. On 4 April 1949, representatives of a dozen countries signed the North Atlantic treaty in Washington DC ‘to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’. Although the Cold War was not always cold, and flared into bloodily hot conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Angola among other places, there was never a face-to-face showdown between Nato and members of the Soviet Union-led Warsaw Pact, let alone a nuclear one.

The district of Pendle in Lancashire has a long history of dissenters, nonconformists, witches and murderers. Perhaps because it is so sodden and bleak and northern: life is nothing but an impoverished struggle against everything, accompanied by the occasional maniacal cry of the curlew and the demented smoke-alarm call of the lapwing. The Pendle Witch Trials of 1612 are famous and many locals have campaigned to have the seven women and two men who were hanged posthumously pardoned. I don’t know if they were witches, but they certainly sounded hugely irritating – especially Alice Nutter, who lived up to her name. The more Starmer sticks to a nuanced line, the

When the last Tory government fell, the famous question after election night was: ‘Were you up for Portillo?’ Were you awake in the small hours when the man many expected to be the next leader lost his seat? This year, there’s no shortage of big beasts likely to be turfed out by the electorate. Jeremy Hunt, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Grant Shapps are just some of those tipped to lose their seats. Many touted as potential leaders – Penny Mordaunt, Miriam Cates and James Cleverly – are also endangered. If current polls are to be believed, the Tories could be reduced to a rump of about 100 MPs and Keir Starmer