Politics

Budget day is approaching and what was once seen as a window of opportunity is now being talked up as a moment of dread. Jeremy Hunt has gone from comparing himself in January to the former tax-slashing chancellor Nigel Lawson to telling the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that, in reality, fiscal constraints mean on Wednesday he will be closer to a ‘prudent’ Gordon Brown. Rishi Sunak is still hoping to make good on his promise of a ‘gear shift’ on taxation. But given the government has less space for manoeuvre than they envisaged at the beginning of the year, any tax cuts will be accompanied by difficult decisions elsewhere.

Rishi Sunak has joined the long line of prime ministers who have declared that enough is enough, and the country must act to root out Islamist extremism. His speech from the steps of 10 Downing Street on Friday was hailed in some Conservative quarters as ‘striking intervention’. Nevertheless, the sceptic might wonder why it’s taken the Prime Minister until now to face up to the fact that many Jews do not feel safe in the British capital. Those same sceptics are entitled to think that despite Sunak’s vow to ‘implement a new robust framework’ to tackle extremism, nothing will change. Britain has been here many times before. Sunak has at

Parliamentary procedures and conventions are often dismissed as ‘arcane’ or ‘byzantine’ by commentators. Still, on occasion, they can have a significant impact on politics – as demonstrated by the recent furore over a Labour amendment to the Gaza ceasefire motion in February. Last week, a new paper in the House of Lords was published which has the potential to have a similar political impact – and could even save the government’s controversial Rwanda Bill, which is in its Report Stage today. The paper, by the convenor of the crossbench peers Lord Kinnoull, is on the Salisbury-Addison convention, which says that the Lords will not vote against Bills which were in the government’s manifesto. The convention began

The record low turnout for parliamentary elections in Iran, which took place on Friday, is another blow to the regime’s attempts to pretend that all is well in the country. Early reports suggest a turnout of just under 41 per cent nationwide. Iranians in their millions have rejected the regime by choosing to stay at home rather than vote. The elections were never really about the final results (victory is pretty much guaranteed for the motley crew of religious hardliners and social conservatives endorsed by the ruling clerics), but about how many people would actually bother to vote. Turnout matters to the mullahs because the election process exists to give

It must be strange to be Russian and living in Serbia these days. On the one hand, Serbs are very welcoming. The country’s historic ties with Russia and their shared Orthodox faith means that most Serbs have been happy to see tens of thousands of Russians settling in their country since the start of the Ukraine war. On the other hand, if you are Russian in Serbia, you might find you are only welcome for as long as you keep your mouth shut. Once seen as a safe-haven for Russians, Serbia is cracking down on those who dare to speak out against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Most recently, Elena Koposova, who