Keir Starmer is the man poised to be the next leader of the UK. But he is also a man of whom many – including those in his own party – have asked: what does he stand for?  Four years after Starmer became leader of the Labour party we know a little more about him. We’ve heard about his childhood, the pebble-dashed semi and his time at the Crown Prosecution Service. But what are the principles behind the man and his project? What do we really know about ‘Starmerism’? Freddie Hayward, political correspondent, is joined by George Eaton, senior editor, who has written this week’s cover st ..read more

The UK’s productivity problem is well documented. Sluggish growth, regional inequality, an obsession with short-termism over long-term investment, among many other factors, have all meant the UK now lags behind many of its peers in output per-hour worked. Therefore, it’s no surprise that our major political parties are vying to find the answer in an election year. In the Spring Budget, the Chancellor focused his productivity efforts on the public sector, announcing a £4.2bn programme to improve productivity, including £3.4bn for the NHS to replace “outdated IT systems” and accelerate new techn ..read more

Monday the 6th of May was an extraordinary day in the Middle East, even by the region’s standards in recent times. The morning started with Israel dropping evacuation notices over Rafah, warning of an imminent invasion and telling civilians to leave the area. The terror sweeping the town and its surrounding refugee camps due to the flying leaflets was immediate.   Desperate Palestinians used their social media accounts to plead for advice on what to do. Some families left Rafah, forming the same evacuation lines we have seen throughout this war, but now forced to leave the wounded be ..read more

This is a story about four left-wing Labour politicians – John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and Diane Abbott – and how they carried forward the cultural revolution of 1968. Inspired and guided by the older Tony Benn, the fifth “searcher” of the title, they single-mindedly enlivened a moribund London Labour politics and transformed the political culture of the capital as it emerged from its postwar decline. In their comradely, disputatious and occasionally angry relationships with one another they shared a political heritage in Benn’s democratic socialism. In 1981 his bid for the d ..read more

Like many areas of life under Conservative Britain, the Tories’ “levelling up” façade has shattered and been exposed for the sham it really is. Despite it being a centrepiece in the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto, months out from the next election it is clear that Britain has not been levelled up. Communities across the country have been let down by the Tories’ fundamental lack of ambition and a lack of willingness to affect genuine change. Too much time and money has been spent on headline-grabbing gimmicks rather than resolving the problems that many of our communities actually face. Instead ..read more

Editor’s note: Sergey Karaganov is a former adviser to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. Bruno Maçães interviewed him at the end of March 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Following reports on 6 May 2024 that Karaganov has been re-hired by the Kremlin to study ways in which to “deter the West”, we are repromoting the interview and revisiting the question of what Putin wants. A former presidential adviser to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Sergey Karaganov is honorary chair of the Moscow think tank the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy. He is associated with a number of ..read more

For most of its lifespan, rafflesia, the world’s largest flower, exists only as an endophyte, a string of cells hidden inside a host vine. It takes several years for a conker-like bud to burst out of the vine, and this bud will grow for months before unfurling into its final form and then dying within days. The largest of all, the speckled, rust-red rafflesia arnoldii can span a metre, with thick, rubbery petals and a putrid, corpse-like smell. Rafflesia is an outlier in the natural world, a parasitic plant that does not photosynthesise, with no roots or leaves or stems. Genetic analysis has r ..read more

There is little sense in waiting for Benjamin Netanyahu to unveil his plans for the future of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, because he isn’t telling. The Israeli media occasionally observes that he still won’t decide. Competing ideas emitting from his government – whether Israel envisions permanent occupation of Gaza and even new settlements; whether the Palestinian Authority will have control; if there will be an international presence, and if so, who – only muddy the picture.   When Netanyahu finally issued a parsimonious document in February for his “day after” pla ..read more

For most of its lifespan, rafflesia, the world’s largest flower, exists only as an endophyte, a string of cells hidden inside a host vine. It takes several years for a conker-like bud to burst out of the vine, and this bud will grow for months before unfurling into its final form and then dying within days. The largest of all, the speckled, rust-red rafflesia arnoldii can span a metre, with thick, rubbery petals and a putrid, corpse-like smell. Rafflesia is an outlier in the natural world, a parasitic plant that does not photosynthesise, with no roots or leaves or stems. Genetic analysis has r ..read more

Time was that the cue for club cricketers to dig out their kit and dream of the summer to come, and of a sudden, magical increase in their abilities, was the start of the County Championship in April, an event usually marked in the papers with an ironical picture of a gloomy, windswept ground housing a few cagoule-clad spectators and the players themselves, frozen stiff. Today, the reminder for many that cricket is afoot comes in late March with the BBC’s commentaries of the Indian Premier League (IPL) – an interminable (74 matches this year) orgy of six-hitting and cheerleading, where the wor ..read more