Dan Bloom
U.K. political editor for POLITICO
politico.eu/staff/dan-bloom/
- NEW: Britain and Norway's foreign ministers both tell me they back the idea of an “Arctic Sentry” NATO mission to countries — including Greenland It would aim to counter Russian threats ... while trying to reassure Donald Trump of Europe’s commitment Story ⬇️ www.politico.eu/article/uk-a...
- NEW: Deputy PM David Lammy raised the recent flood of AI-generated, sexualized images on X with JD Vance when they met in the White House last night One person said it had gone well, and that Vance seemed receptive to Lammy’s points
- 🌹 Labour's Brexit tribes This isn't the Tory "five families" or the Malthouse Compromise. Not yet. But distinct strains of thought are beginning to emerge in the Labour Party and could burst out if there was a leadership contest Where will it all end? ⬇️ www.politico.eu/article/meet...
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View full threadPM's allies insist his opposition to a customs union is deep. Says one senior Lab official: “Keir is really strong on it." Starmer is invested in his plans and discussed them on a Chequers walk with Nick Thomas-Symonds But others detect a need to reclaim a Europhile narrative from Wes Streeting 👀
- Loads of tidbits in our guide to the Labour camps here: www.politico.eu/article/meet...
- Stella Creasy told me Labour should put a "Swiss-style" deal — which would return Britain to free movement and hefty payments to EU — in its 2029 manifesto PM's biographer Tom Baldwin says Starmer's comments this week indicate 2029 manifesto could “get very close to rejoining the single market.”
- One person who speaks regularly to No. 10 says there could be a "boil the frog strategy" at work “You get closer and closer and then maybe … you go into the election saying ‘we’ll try to negotiate something more single markety or customs uniony.’”
- 🌹 The Customs Unionists 🌹 The Single Marketeers 🌹 The Swiss Bankers 🌹 The Issues-Led MPs 🌹 The Blue Labour holdouts All except the last group are united by wanting closer ties with Brussels regardless of the mechanism. But some would come closer to Keir Starmer's red lines — or crash through them
- Keir Starmer doesn’t have a big back-to-school speech in the diary next week, I hear — though he does have a series of visits planned to talk about the cost of living and will give a few remarks Nigel Farage meanwhile is drawing up plans for a press conference next week
- 🔮 In your special New Year's Day Playbook — out now! Featuring predictions for 2026 by some very fine journalists The most interesting conclusion is ... Keir Starmer survives?
- 🎖️ Forget the New Year Honours! Here are the London Playbook Awards 2025 From SpAd and Political Adviser of the Year to Survivor of the Year ... no prizes for guessing who that last one is www.politico.eu/article/poli...
- MARK YOUR DIARIES — How to watch British politics in 2026 like a pro 📅 Why is the May king's speech so jeopardous? Will the Treasury manage to keep the March spring statement low key? Which summit on May 15 will decide the future of migration policy? The guide you need ⬇️
- AND ... we've got a podcast for that! Patrick Baker has wheeled through the next year in 40 minutes on a great edition of Westminster Insider (Featuring me and Annabelle Dickson predicting whether Starmer will still be leader by September 😬) megaphone.link/POLL4534090041
- 🧰 🧰 🧰 My budget piece How today shows that — despite Rachel Reeves' best efforts — British politics is still living hand-to-mouth, year-to-year. What will next year bring? Who knows!
- NEW: How the Tories learned to stop worrying and fight dirty Inside the "attack cell" in CCHQ that fuelled the Angela Rayner story before her resignation Plus, the changes in Kemi Badenoch's office line-up that have finally helped her find attack mode
- EXC: Keir Starmer is polling even worse than ex-prince Andrew, Wales’ Labour finance minister has said Two people tell me Mark Drakeford made the hair-raising comparison at an event on Sunday The former first minister's team say he was talking in a personal capacity re. publicly available polling
- This looks like the "jewellery" clause in the Home Office's asylum reforms: “We will require individuals to contribute towards the cost of their asylum support where they have some assets or income, but not enough to support themselves independently. 1/2
- 2/2 "We will also take action to recover support costs in scenarios where any assets are not convertible into cash or declared at the point that asylum support is initially provided but become convertible or are discovered at a later date.”
- 🚨 Home Office will offer families "financial support to enable them to return to their home country. Should they refuse that support, we will escalate to an enforced return. We will launch a consultation on the process for enforcing the removal of families, including children.”
- 🚨🚨🚨 EXCLUSIVE by @estwebber.bsky.social and me Final decision on restoration of parliament is set to be postponed **beyond the next general election** MPs were due to vote this year on 4 options Plan is now: pick 2 options, and start "preparatory work" Final option may only emerge in early 2030s
- 🏠 "Keir hates it" We have a big piece on the trials of running a G7 country from Downing Street — a poky rabbit warren in three Georgian townhouses knocked together Tiny offices, mice, "nan's bathrooms," duct-taped carpets, dodgy heating, no phone signal, hardly any showers ... and a prawn
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View full threadBUT ... a PM who is good enough can conquer the building. As ex-Blair aide John McTernan put it: “The problem with any government is, if you don’t know what you want to do, how are you going to know how to do it? “And then you blame your tools. The house is a tool."
- My colleague Patrick Baker has also done this on the fab Westminster Insider pod
- We have stories of Liz Truss’s sweaty aides queuing for a single shower after joining her morning run … Donald Trump dripping orange from his face in an overheated room … the Scooby Doo-style slapstick of finding Boris Johnson ...
- No. 10 gravitates toward small groups and "silo thinking." The 8.45 a.m. has Starmer and just over half a dozen key aides including McSweeney, his two deputies, Allan and Cabinet enforcers Darren Jones and Jonathan Reynolds. Previous PMs tried to change the way the building works to little avail
- Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney have both struggled — like previous occupants — with the building The embattled PM (usually an open plan kinda guy) regularly escapes the "hustle and bustle of the ground floor" to his first floor study. He's been known to complain about the noise 😬
- Brilliant piece from my colleague Charlie Cooper on the mixed politics of Keir Starmer's trip to the COP30 summit The PM is said to be instinctively supportive of climate action — but not so much that he has "his own ideas about things," argues one Labour MP
- The pay-off line:
- “It’s pathetic nailing on one point. It’s just pathetic. Grow up. Seriously, seriously ... Why are you guys obsessing about one little piece?" — Reform UK's Richard Tice to me when I asked about ... a data-sharing agreement between his DOGE unit and Kent County Council 🤔
- Serious point here is it seems like Tice might be giving up on full DOGE audits of internal council data (which were the original aim back in the summer), amid legal hurdles He told me a data-sharing agreement isn't “the biggest thing” and “there’s other ways we can get data"
- EXCL: Reform UK is eyeing up sweeping changes to public sector pensions, Richard Tice has indicated. Nigel Farage’s deputy told me “how long can we carry on offering defined benefit pensions to all public sector workers?” is a massive Q “not properly discussed in Westminster”
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View full threadFarage’s decision seems to be a long way off, but the fact he is even able to consider this so openly shows how much capital Reform seems to have right now. Tice told me: “Everything’s up for review, because nothing’s affordable if we keep spending more than we’re earning.”
- Tice wouldn’t be drawn yet on what might replace defined benefit pensions — saying it can’t be answered in a week or a month But this could be a big fight with Whitehall. These (typically more generous) schemes covered 82 percent of public sector workers in 2021
- It’s part of a deep dive by me on the million-dollar question: what will happen if Reform UK promises to scrap the state pension triple lock? Would Labour and the Tories ditch it too, or (… more likely) start a virulent attack campaign?
- 🔴 Big week for the collapsed China spy case next week We took a swing at why Keir Starmer is fighting so hard to keep Jonathan Powell — breaking down just how tied he is into every aspect of foreign policy
- Some Caerphilly takeaways that go beyond Wales — "Non-voters" slipping under the radar — Tactical voting is key. Does it help Labour elsewhere? — Incumbency sucks — Messaging doesn't land — Nothing sticks to Reform (yet) — But can we now see the ceiling?
- NEW: Labour is getting fighty again on Brexit Ministers are now deliberately talking about Brexit harms to pitch-roll for the budget, where the OBR will say the impact of leaving is worse than thought But there are overlapping strategies and huge danger
- There is also a strategy to pin the failings on Tories and Farage But there is tension over how nuanced this messaging should be. Slagging off Brexit is Labour's old comfort zone but says one official: "You can’t just go around blaming Brexit. It’s saying voters are wrong"
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View full threadWe’re in “Phase 2.” To some it’s already Phase 3, post the Mandelson/Rayner scandals. So what next? Well....
- “Phase IV” is in fact the name of a 1970s cult horror film in which humanity is subjugated by a colony of hyper-intelligent ants One Labour adviser: “I’m actually looking forward to that bit. I won’t have to think about all of this" 🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜
- 😬 Ultimately though — for many people — it comes back to the question about the overall project Neal Lawson of the new Mainstream group (who is definitely no friend of Starmer!) puts it thus: “The underlying foundations of this project are so weak that it endangers the future of the Labour Party.”
- But backers of the PM say similar, in less strident terms MPs have been extremely vocal to whips and No. 10 in private One Labour adviser: “Everyone’s accepted May is the season finale … They are both that angry and that stupid.”
- ❓“Mission delivery” will be a big part, moved to No. 10 but still taking shape. I hear the “mission boards” — led by Cabinet ministers but widely derided — haven’t met since summer. Officials seem quiet on whether they’ve been formally scrapped.
- 💣 The big dangers ahead are the budget (Nov. 26) and elections (May 7) But also watch out for the e-book of Paul Holden’s “The Fraud,” which is due out mid-October Holden tells me it will have “considerably new information” on the Labour Together donations row... 👀
- 💰 Labour’s finances are in a “perfect storm” Membership numbers slipping, donors hesitant post-election, and unions giving little beyond their affiliation fees One person tells me the deficit is currently running at around £3 million
- ☹️ And bubbling along quietly are ministers unhappy at the reshuffle One adviser: “The whole thing was fucking bonkers. We have thrown the board up in the air and hoped all the pieces work out. Either it’s going to be chaos or it’s going to be brilliant.”
- ⏲️ Yet it has also been forced by events. Black MPs in particular were disappointed by the government’s response to nationalist protests over the summer, said one Labour adviser. “We ceded ground” One Lab MP: “It feels like we’ve been in a defensive crouch all summer”
- ⚡️ Then there are the conference flashpoints — two-child limit and Gaza PM has had breakfasts in No. 10 with MPs this week One organizer: “I think they’ll just want a steady as you go conference with nothing unsettling them. You feel like that’s what Starmer wants all the time"
