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Ministers of both parties have spent a decade blaming the people in the queue. The numbers point at the people running it.

After two years of decline, the Conservatives have edged ahead of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in a closely watched poll. Behind the numbers lies a larger struggle over the identity, credibility and future of the British right.

Trump rarely admires foreign figures by accident. His praise for Asim Munir points to something deeper than protocol: a recognition of rank, restraint and the kind of charismatic presence Trump has always found irresistible.

Keir Starmer came to office as the antidote to chaos. Yet British politics has a habit of making stable governments look temporary with startling speed. As Labour faces scandal, voter fragmentation and signs of internal narrowing, the snap-election conversation no longer feels fanciful. And if Britain is pushed back to the polls early, the beneficiary may not be who Westminster once assumed.

An undercover investigation has exposed how migrants, many of them Pakistani, are allegedly being coached to pose as gay in order to claim asylum in Britain, raising difficult questions about visa abuse, organised deception and the damage done to genuine refugees.

Reeves delivers a Budget which expands the state and cuts child poverty, relying on record tax and threshold freezes, but offers little comfort to those worried about stagnant wages, no investment, and threadbare services.