Matthew Lees

💥This is the key quote. Keir Starmer will now face questions over whether he has been fully transparent over the process. At a press conference on February 5, the PM said that there had been “security vetting, carried out independently by the security services which is an intensive exercise, that gave him [Mandelson] clearance for the role.” x.com/GregHeffer/sta…

ANGRY YOUNG WOMEN by @emilylawford and @Scarlett__Mag It was a Wednesday night and seven members of the University of Leeds’ feminist society had invited me to join their book swap. I asked how they felt about the young men they knew. “I don’t care for them,” said a girl called Ruby imperiously. “They’re not bad people, but they refuse to call out their friends who make other girls uncomfortable. They’ll laugh at jokes that are sexist, racist, homophobic, they don’t care about political issues… I don’t think they like women a lot.” If a man is attracted to you, she said, he might talk about things like toxic misogyny. If he doesn’t fancy you, he won’t bother. “I feel like a lot of it is quite sexually motivated with men.” I asked if they’d consider dating a man with different political views. They all immediately said no. “I don’t think I’d even be friends with one,” said one girl. “They don’t see you as human.” Only one woman, Evelyn, admitted to having male friends (though she was worried this made her a “pick me”, trying too hard for male attention). Evelyn was concerned about what the men she knew were watching online. “The stuff that’s being said about women is crazy,” she said. “They’re getting all these reels, talking about, like, bad stuff about women. And I get reels of women saying bad stuff about men. I try to think, not all men are like this, but…” On the internet, women and men have never been more alienated from each other. While the toxic, often hard-right politics of the manosphere have been exhaustively documented, the new generation of female influencers are nearly as extreme – just on the other side of the political spectrum. The “femosphere” spans a range of tones: there are misandrist dating coaches who urge women to reject men altogether, and more explicitly progressive content creators who cover global and domestic politics. Exclusive polling by Merlin Strategy for the New Statesman reveals that young women, aged between 18 and 30, are by far the most progressive demographic in the UK. Young women are 26 percentage points less likely to feel positively about capitalism than young men, and much less likely to feel the economy works in their favour. Gen Z women are more likely to support causes such as feminism, environmentalism and anti-racism than young men. They also feel much more negatively towards young men than young men feel about them. I spent the last few months in search of the new left-wing young women. It wasn’t difficult – they were everywhere. But it all felt impossibly bleak. They weren’t excited about their futures. They didn’t like the men they knew, or the idea of those they didn’t. Men were just a threat who had the potential to harm or trap them. This will almost certainly make relationships harder: fewer than half of young women feel men understand them. Young women are much less likely than men to date people who disagree with their politics. People will get lonelier, and angrier. Young women are twice as likely to not want children as young men. And it’s getting worse. Women under 25 are most likely to believe things are “stacked against me, no matter how hard I try”. A significant majority of young women feel isolated from the rest of the country. The two main political parties aren’t reaching out to them specifically. Many women told me they feared a Reform government pressuring them to have babies. Many say they will vote for the Greens in the upcoming local elections, but few seem to believe that will make a difference. They don’t feel represented by mainstream politics, and they don’t think anyone cares. Cover art by Carl Godfrey

Senior defence officials are meeting this week to find £3.5bn of cuts this year amid calls for increased funding, @samcoatessky exclusively reveals. Get the full story on the latest episode of #PASAA, wherever you get your podcasts 👉 podfollow.com/politics-at-sa…

Palestine Action activists sued: “I smashed up these guys’ business, and I can’t believe that they want me to pay for the damage!” theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/a…

Exclusive from @benclatworthy Ministers are being told not to tell people to “stop panic-buying” or to “calm down” over fears it would exacerbate fuel shortages Officials are briefing ministers using a series of documents, including one by the Government Communication Service’s behavioural science team, which lists what language should and should not be used in social media campaigns and media interviews It says: “Approaches that focus on ‘calming’ people may fail to tackle the root causes of the issue. If people are rationally changing their buying behaviour to cope with unexpected situations, then trying to ‘calm’ them will be ineffective (and messages exhorting people to ‘stop panicking’ will likely create a further impression of competition for goods).” Departments are also using the government’s “crisis communications planning guide”, which sets out how to deal with crises. Most of the materials have been drawn up after the Covid pandemic, when Britons stockpiled toilet paper and pasta, and the 2021 fuel crisis, which resulted in huge queues at the pumps The Cabinet Office is also understood to be consulting with behaviour scientists to refine future communication messages in the event oil stocks do run dangerously low, or the public begin stockpiling. The behavioural science guide says: “In most situations, excessive buying is not irrational or selfish at all and is driven by people responding to normal incentives. If an item is rumoured to be in short supply and is at risk of running out, then it is advantageous to buy extra. “If shelves are frequently empty, people will have good reasons to go to the shop more often to secure supplies. If there are long queues to get fuel, then filling your tank and taking extra fuel home is a logical response to the situation.” thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…