Comment Central

But her double standards are plain to see. She does not follow her own words when it comes to EU policy. How else would you describe the EU’s willingness to throw money and legitimacy behind non-EU politicians it deems pro-EU and anti-Russian? Take the examples of Moldova and Armenia, this included providing substantial cash and dubiously named ‘Election Integrity Operations’. Operations that just so happened to support the preferred candidate of the EU.

The number of people aged 85 and over in England is on course to double within twenty years. The Office for Budget Responsibility calculates that simply keeping today's care system running will require public spending on social care to rise by 3.1 per cent a year over the next decade, more than four times the 0.7 per cent average managed between 2009/10 and 2022/23. It is, by any measure, a national bill.

Andy Burnham on Wednesday used a Times leader to set out his foreign policy priorities as he gears up to become Britain’s seventh prime minister in the last decade. The MP for Makerfield issued the usual platitudes about “keeping people safe [being] the first responsibility of any government,” but missed the elephant in the room by failing to address the defining geopolitical challenge of our age: the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

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I was recently invited to give oral evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Numeracy for Life at a session focusing on the needs of older adults. I focused particularly on the potential role of numeracy in protecting financial resilience and wellbeing in later life, through its role in financial literacy: the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours necessary to achieve financial wellbeing. For a growing number of older adults, retirement brings a surge in financial complexity.

The prize is significant. Analysis by Offshore Energies UK suggests that reforming the current windfall tax next year would generate an additional £15.7 billion in tax revenues over the coming decade by unlocking investment and sustaining domestic production. That figure is striking because it closely mirrors the funding challenge now confronting ministers as they seek to increase defence spending.

Ask anyone in Westminster whether the UK should be resilient, and the answer is yes. Ask whether we should pay, today, for capacity we hope never to use, and the conversation gets harder. The gap between wanting resilience and funding it is our single biggest preparedness risk. Everyone wants resilience; nobody wants redundancy. And resilience, stripped of the jargon, is largely redundancy with a better name.

As ministers, broadcasters and policymakers debate the future of Gaelic broadcasting and the next BBC Charter, one question deserves more attention: what would Scotland lose if Gaelic media disappeared? For its critics, Gaelic broadcasting has long been an easy target. It serves a relatively small audience and relies on public funding. At a time of pressure on budgets, some ask whether that money could be better spent elsewhere. But that debate starts from the wrong premise.

"All elements of our security are supported by our ability to tackle illicit finance – the flows of funds from criminal activity that underpin threats to the UK including terrorist networks, serious and organised crime groups, and hostile state actors." So says the 2025 UK National Security Strategy, a sentiment which has been at the heart of our Centre for Finance and Security at RUSI since I founded the programme in 2014.

Germany, Austria and the Netherlands: prevention, not rescue The countries with the lowest NEET rates built systems in which youth detachment is structurally harder to fall into. Germany and Austria maintain vocational pathways genuinely valued by employers and carrying no social stigma. The Milburn Review notes that significantly fewer young British people are in vocational education than in Germany, the Netherlands or Denmark: 22 per cent compared to 35 per cent.