Will Hutton

"I LOVE OUR COUNTRY...AND ONE OF THE THINGS I LOVE IS GOOD MANNERS" Chancellor Rachel Reeves confronts an angry heckler moments ago in a petrol station in Leeds

🚨🚨🎙️ Wayne Rooney on Arsenal winning the Premier League after 22 years: an emotional speech 🎤 “This team… this team… honestly, I’m actually feeling emotional for them right now. For years people called them soft, fragile, bottlers… every season it was ‘stay humble’, ‘show some mentality’, ‘build some muscle’, ‘they’re not built for the big moments’. 😭 Well… where’s Mr. Mentality now? Where’s the man telling everyone to stay humble now? Where’s the man mocking them with a bottle. I can’t see them 👀 Because Arsenal have gone and done it. After 22 years. And they didn’t do it in an easy season either, they did it in one of the toughest Premier League campaigns I can remember. The pressure, the intensity, the competition… and they still came out on top. If right now, you are still doubting this team then you’ve been left behind, and it’s only a matter of time you will stop doubting them. You have to give credit where it’s due. Mikel Arteta deserves enormous praise because he rebuilt this club step by step and got people believing again. I can already see Arsenal fans becoming the loudest people on earth for the next 20 years… and honestly? Fair enough. They’ve suffered enough. Congratulations to Arsenal Football Club.” 🏆❤️

I’ve found Wayne Rooney’s analysis and judgement on football this season really insightful. This commentary on Arsenal is a phenomenal tribute to the team and its coach. I have to say I don’t have quite the trust and belief he thinks fans now have - but he helps me get there!

If Starmer goes that would be 5 different PMs in five years, despite two of them having historically large Parliamentary majorities… Impossible to plan, strategise and deliver even medium term economic plans, let alone long term thinking going on elsewhere…

In the name of public service, and as ex-economics editor of BBC Newsnight, I offer to do a zoom call, tonight, with any Labour MP who wants to understand why bond markets do not "fall into line" with governments. 1/

Starmer's authority is now crumbling. But even those most committed to a new Prime Minister should pause for thought about what it means for Britain in the world. For all his many, many domestic missteps, Keir Starmer has genuinely led on Ukraine, make tough calls with Trump and rebuilt relations with Europe by working intensely with President Macron and Chancellor Merz. Labour in government was shocked at how quickly it was swamped by foreign affairs from Gaza and Ukraine, to Trump and Iran. This isn't going to change. However Starmer's challengers have no foreign policy experience, no geopolitical worldviews, no foreign affairs teams and no experience in explaining our place in the world and its tumult to the public. But if they succeed that will be half their job. What's the plan for a geopolitical pivot to Europe? What's the strategy to deal with Trump and our fragmenting Western alliance as China's Axis of Authoritarians deepens? What's next for Britain's extensive diplomatic and security role when it comes to Ukraine? Who will be maintaining key connections to the White House? Changes at the top are often necessary. But they are delicate and not cost free internationally. In diplomacy so much is bound up in personal connections and trust built up over time. Building since 2016, these musical chairs at the top have now become so intense, with Prime Ministers lasting roughly two years and Foreign Secretaries now annuals, our allies and partners are frustrated. I've heard from European and Gulf leaderships first hand it is hardly worth investing diplomatically in a counterpart who's suddenly gone and thus hardly worth investing in Britain.

Starmer’s incapacities are obvious. However he has a mandate. As soon as he is replaced in however an ‘orderly fashion’ British media bias will become deadly. One rule on lack of mandates for the right: another for the left. The cabinet must plan skilfully; it could get worse.