Comment is Freed

Four things determine whether prime ministers are successful. Three are about them. Do they have the requisite character and public presence for the job? Is there a clear guiding purpose to their administration? Can they put together a team to run a functioning operation? The fourth is context. What are the specific challenges they face and are they prepared to meet them? There’s been a lot of speculation about Burnham’s character and his likely appointments to senior roles.

Smoke rises from Gazprom Neft’s oil refinery in Moscow I have focused on the siege of Crimea in recent posts because the Kremlin seems to have no idea how to deal with the peninsula’s loss of supplies and energy. This remains the case. The position continues to worsen. In the past week we have seen a further remarkable development with the success of Ukrainian uncrewed systems targeting Russian tankers and cargo ships in the Kerch strait, which links ​the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

When I wrote last week that Nigel Farage was struggling under the pressure of scrutiny, I didn’t expect it to manifest so quickly. Yesterday, in a somewhat panicked attempt to recapture the initiative he triggered a by-election in his Clacton constituency. Even had the other parties played along it was unlikely to work, as media and parliamentary investigations into his finances would continue anyway.

The eventual publication of the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was bound to be somewhat anti-climactic. It came after months of wrangling between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury, including the resignation of the Secretary of State for Defence and a junior minister. While some more money had been found after the resignations it was bound not to be enough and so the attack lines were ready to go.

Here are three things that are all true: Kemi Badenoch’s personal ratings have improved significantly since last year. On Opinium’s job approval question she’s gone from -27% in May 2025 to -8% this month. Ipsos had her favourability below Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage in June 2025, but she’s now well ahead of both. As recently as last August, Farage beat her on a YouGov forced choice question about who would be the best prime minister, now she’s leading him by 38% to 17%.

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The big story in the Russo-Ukraine War remains the siege of Crimea. Ukraine has been systematically preventing supplies getting into the peninsula – attacking road, train, and ferry links. Putin’s prestige project, the Kerch Bridge, is still standing but it has been weakened and cannot take the weight of traffic for which it was intended. Fuel tankers and other heavy goods traffic are prohibited from using the bridge lest there be a repeat of the first Ukrainian attack, in October 2022.

The end of Keir Starmer’s premiership had become so inevitable that his decision to go caused little excitement in Westminster. Thoughts turned some time ago to what a Burnham administration will look like. The jostling for jobs and lobbying by special interests was already well underway. It’s not a sentimental place. Last month I looked at what the new Downing Street set up might be, some of the big decisions Burnham will face on arrival, and gave a high-level overview of potential policies.

Andrey Kurkov is Ukraine’s greatest living novelist, perhaps best known in the UK for Death and the Penguin. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion he has lectured and written about the challenges his country faces. Three Years on Fire (published by Open Borders Press, available from the Guardian Bookshop) is the third of his collections of diary entries and commentaries on the war and has been short-listed for the Orwell Political Writing BookPrize (winner to be announced on 25 June).

Israel’s approach to ceasefires — and it has been involved in many - follows a pattern. The starting point is normally that they don’t want a ceasefire because they have unfinished business. They also wish it to be known that they will always do what is necessary as an independent sovereign power to protect their security whatever anyone, including the US, tells them to do. This requires fighting at least one day after the demand for a ceasefire if only to make the point that they can.