James Heale

The Prime Minister has never been a huge fan of the press. But there is an apt Fleet Street phrase to describe his screeching shift in tone on the great Labour welfare rebellion: reverse ferret! Just yesterday, he was all bullish talk, claiming that the more than 100 Labour MPs who want to vote down his Welfare Bill were little more than 'noises off'. But this morning in parliament, he has adopted a much more emollient approach. It comes after six more MPs backed a rebel amendment overnight, bringing the total to 126 – around half of those Labour MPs who do not hold a government role. The marked change in language is now being taken as No.

Summer is here – and for some in Labour it cannot come soon enough. After a tricky first year in office, the parliamentary party is in fractious mood. More than 100 of Keir Starmer’s MPs are raging against his welfare cuts; others are fuming about Israel. Some aides in No. 10 hope recess will give the government a much-needed chance to catch its breath. ‘Everyone needs a lie-down,’ says one party manager.  Yet in one corner of Whitehall, summer brings no respite. The Home Office is braced for a season of bad headlines: two more months helplessly watching small boats cross the Channel every day. Warm weather increases the likelihood of such trips.

Keir Starmer is in the Netherlands to attend the Nato summit – but that is not the subject which is gripping everyone back home. This afternoon, the Prime Minister held a press conference to confirm that the UK will shortly be expanding its nuclear deterrent by buying a squadron of American-made fighter jets. It is the most significant change in Britain’s nuclear posture since the end of the Cold War. Yet the attendant hacks chose to focus on a rather different conflict. The welfare bill dominated today’s PMQs in Starmer’s absence and is clearly the obsession of MPs here in Westminster. With 120 Labour rebels now publicly confirmed, would the PM now be pulling the bill? Absolutely not, suggested Starmer.

With Keir Starmer at Nato, the hospital pass of this week's PMQs was handed instead to Angela Rayner. The welfare row is tearing apart the Labour party, with more than 120 MPs now committed to voting against the changes to disability benefit next Tuesday. In such circumstances, the obvious choice to fill in for Kemi Badenoch was the shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride – the man who had previously held the work and pensions brief from 2022 to 2024. Given Labour's woes, today was always going to be a difficult day for Rayner. Sir Mel certainly made it so, opening with a decent crack about her recent leaked memo to Rachel Reeves. Welcoming Rayner to her place, Stride declared, ‘we share many things – not least that we both viscerally disagree with the Chancellor’s tax policy.

Reform UK are on the rise – quite literally. The party is planning to move one floor up in their headquarters at Millbank Tower, giving its 40-odd staff a commanding view of Westminster from their office. That change in circumstance was reflected in Nigel Farage's speech this morning, when he strolled in to Westminster's Church House to set out his party's pitch to non-doms. The Clacton MP told journalists that 'tens of thousands' of people would be tempted to the UK by the offer of the card The party's headline announcement today was the launch of a new 'Britannia card'. This would be a one-off £250,000 fee which would allow non-doms – UK residents whose permanent home for tax purposes is outside the UK – to avoid income tax.

This is not been Keir Starmer's finest week on the world stage. At the G7 on Tuesday, the Prime Minister breezily dismissed talk that the Americans would shortly join Israeli's attack on Iran. 'There’s nothing the President said that suggests he’s about to get involved in this conflict,' he insisted. 'On the contrary, throughout the dinner yesterday, I was sitting right next to President Trump, so I’ve no doubt in my mind the level of agreement there was.' Within hours, Trump left Alberta to return to the White House Situation Room and approve the final attack plan for Iran. Then there was the row over whether US bombers would launch from Diego Garcia, the British military base on the Chagos Islands.

Just before 1 a.m GMT on Sunday morning, Donald Trump announced that the United States had bombed three nuclear sites in Iran: Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan sites. It followed a tense 72 hours in which senior White House advisers became increasingly convinced that diplomatic channels had been exhausted, with military action the only available recourse to eliminate Iran's nuclear programme. Following the attack, Trump declared: We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors.