On Friday, the president of Portugal admitted he no longer had another option and acceded to the directive of the legislature to dissolve the Portuguese parliament and call an election. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal’s president of the last nine years, and former leader of the centre-right Social Democrat Party, is not required to call elections on the advice of the prime minister but instead must consult the Council of State, made up of senior members of the executive, judiciary, and legislature, which includes at the moment both the prime minister and leaders of the two major opposition parties among others. Rebelo de Sousa, disinclined to call an election just a year after their previous one, found that bipartisan support for the snap election left him no other choice.
So, on the 18th of May, Portugal will head to the polls. Portugal elects 230 members to their unicameral Assembly of the Republic, distributed proportionally by vote count in multi-member constituencies, which range in size from two seats (Portalegre) to forty-eight (Lisbon). As a result, nine parties are represented in the legislature, from across the political spectrum.
The centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD), which consists almost entirely of members of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), won the previous election but struggled significantly in minority government, with only 80 seats, fighting tooth and nail for a significantly compromised-upon budget, passed with the support of the PS. Their leader and the prime minister Luís Montenegro was forced to call a confidence motion in his government following controversy surrounding his family business with real estate interests, Spinumviva. He initially claimed there was no conflict of interest as he had sold all his shares to his wife, but that argument quickly fell apart. Perhaps to avoid this sort of obfuscation, selling business shares to a spouse is not permitted in Portugal, so any sale he thought he had made was invalid and he was in fact the shares’ owner. Following the instigation of a parliamentary investigation, and the news police were also looking into a complaint, as you might have guessed from the outcome, he lost said confidence vote, 87-137.
So it will be the centre-left Socialist Party (PS) who will be looking to regain some of the 42 seats they lost last year, after the collapse of their government in the wake of their own corruption scandal. Currently holding 78 seats, they are in a very good position to retake the reins of government. In third place in 2024 were Enough! (CH) who surged to 50 seats. Usually characterised as far right, they fit the profile for a such-described European party, anti-immigration, Eurosceptic, and for lower taxes and smaller government. While Rebelo de Sousa used his platform again this week to warn against such parties that sow division, clearly referencing CH, it is worth noting that they are not quite as openly racist as the AfD in Germany for example.
(It struck me as I wrote this, that in researching this piece, how similar CH’s platform is to the major hard-right faction of the UK Conservative Party - and how much more extreme the US Republican Party is, and yet it is very rarely referred to as far right.)
The remaining 22 seats are held by a selection of smaller parties ordered here decreasing by parliamentary strength, right-wing Liberal Initiative, the Left Bloc, the Communist Party, green party FREE, and People-Animals-Nature, who will all also seek to exploit the instability of the previous year’s government in their favour. Of course, while some may be persuaded that the major parties just aren’t cutting it, some might be dissuaded from voting for the minor parties for fear of another weak government. The polls offer little in way of elucidation, at almost exactly the levels of the previous election, CH down 2 points, LI up 2, according to Politico. We’ll just have to wait and see.

On Thursday, the government revealed that it would be abolishing NHS England, the administrative side of the NHS which oversees the allocation of funding. Directed by the government, NHS England was established by the Cameron government to increase independence of the NHS, overseeing budget, planning, and delivery, it being perceived that ministers were too involved with its day-to-day running. But no longer.
Announced by the Starmer, but predicted for the past month at least, the move typifies his current rallying against bureaucracy. He claims the move will save the government nearly half a billion pounds and will improve the quality of services by placing responsibility for them back into the hands of an accountable elected official. Indeed, the Conservatives near the end of the Sunak government felt that returning control of the NHS to ministers was the only way to improve it.
Starmer blamed quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations), of which he described NHS England as the “world’s largest”, for a “cottage industry of checkers and blockers slowing down delivery for working people”, and pledged to cut costs by promoting an “active government”. But does he really mean it? Of course, we will have to wait and see whether this move is a harbinger of more widespread policy, but while the abolition of NHS England fits the anti-quango bill, its giving direct control of the NHS to the government will allow more significant faster reform of the system, desperately needed by the Starmer administration if he is to persuade the public that he is serving them. It also serves to assuage those in the party structure who believe Reform will be the biggest threat to Labour at the next election, the hard-right party priding themselves on fighting the establishment. This may be the case - Starmer’s diplomatic success puts Labour only 1% ahead of Reform in the polls and 6% ahead of the Tories, on a vote share that would lead to a massively fragmented parliament, the likes of which not seen ever before in the House of Commons. It is perhaps also worth noting that the 2010 Conservative government eliminated over 300 quangos. Labour since their election last year have set up 20. Perhaps now is not yet the time to worry too much about the Trumpian images this move brings to mind.
But the party ever moves right-ward. Not content with halving foreign aid, the government tabled proposals to significantly cut benefits for those with disabilities, by cancelling a planned increase in-line with inflation of personal independence payments, while also suggesting a change in rules which would mean only the more significantly physically disabled would be entitled to many payments currently more widely given. Especially those with mental health conditions would find these payments much harder to claim, in a move defended by the health secretary on Sunday, who said mental health conditions were being overdiagnosed, and that “too many people being written off”. It looks possible that the government will be forced to backtrack on the latter part of the proposal, faced with mounting backlash from Labour MPs both within cabinet and without, while Streeting would not deny that the freeze had been shelved following threats of ministerial resignation.
Only time will tell whether such moves will bring the party electoral success. Labour risk losing left-wing voters to the Lib Dems, who now lie firmly further left of the government, and with Reform established as a mainstream party, even if still a protest one, the next election looks to pose far more credible challenges to the Labour party than last year’s.

This week in Trumpland started with the news that Ukraine was ready to sign a 30-day ceasefire deal. All eyes were on Russia. How nice for a change! Putin, undoubtedly very unhappy at his minion Donald turning the tables on him, has mostly stalled on any actual response to the proposal, but has made clear it has no intentions of acquiescing to any Ukrainian stipulations made in the deal. Nor would Russia sign a deal that permitted Ukraine to rearm or receive arms for the entirety of the 30 days, a demand that Ukraine cannot agree to. Would Putin rearm? Of course. So, the ceasefire would be 30 days of waiting for the war to inevitably restart, weakened. Putin is to speak with Trump in the coming week. Perhaps he’ll remind him of some kompromat or of their new world order, where he can have the Americas and Putin Europe, if he only remembers who’s at fault regarding peace in Ukraine.
At least, this goes to show Zelenskyy’s diplomatic capability, putting Ukraine firmly and conspicuously on the side of peace for the purposes of an American audience (because it's clear to the rest of the world), and putting himself back at Trump’s negotiating table. It is worth remembering that just a few weeks ago, peace talks in Saudi Arabia didn’t even include Ukraine.
On the domestic side of things, Trump and his cronies continue to get their power-hungry hands dirty, in dismantling the federal government and attacking the American rule of law. Congress has been disgracefully complicit this week. The Republicans narrowly passed a ‘continuing resolution’ in the house in order to avoid a shutdown of the executive on Friday. The House Democrats stood firm against the measure, with just one defection from their ranks. They argued that if Republicans can’t manage to use their trifecta to pass a budget, then such a half-measure as a continuing resolution should be bipartisan if it is to get any Democratic votes. And this continuing resolution was no continuing resolution. The bill significantly increased military funding while decreasing aid for poor Americans. And the bill was far more sinister than that. Snuck into its many many pages was language that prevented any member of congress from bringing the question of a continued national emergency to a vote. Because only congress has the power to levy tariffs in general, Trump declared a national emergency over the American fentanyl crisis to utilise a loophole which allows him to apply tariffs without prior authorisation by congress while a national emergency is in effect. As such, any vote on stopping the national emergency would be a de facto vote on ending the tariffs, which would have put many Republicans from purple (or even badly affected red) districts in a sticky situation. And to stop this, the House Republicans decided the best course of action was of course, to drastically reduce their own power. As if they weren’t enough of a rubber stamp, they now collude to further deprive themselves of power to keep a dictatorial president in check.
So the Senate Democrats were faced with the choice between passing a law that gave Trump more power, or a government shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer argued that a shutdown would play exactly into the hands of Trump and Musk and the chaos it would cause would give them perfect cover to further decimate the executive. Because it was not an official budget bill, the Senate Democrats had the power to filibuster the bill to stop its passage. A vote on cloture to force a vote and end a filibuster requires sixty votes not fifty-one, and the Republicans number only fifty-three in the Senate. After much deliberation and intense behind-the-scenes debate, much to the anger of the House Democratic leadership, enough Democratic senators voted for cloture 62-38, and the bill then passed 54-46. Indeed, one Democrat and one Independent who caucuses with the Democrats voted for the bill, and one Republican against, arguing it didn’t cut government spending enough. When asked whether the Senate Democrats should remove Schumer as leader, a move unprecedented mid-term, Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the Democrats in the House replied, “Next question.” Representatives thought they had a chance to be the outraged and oppositional voice their constituents are demanding. But it was just too much of a risk for a few too many Democrat Senators. At least the Republicans will own the economy 100%, Trump refusing to rule out a recession earlier in the week.
And on Tuesday, Trump hosted a bizarre and probably illegal Tesla car show at the White House in response to Tesla stock having plummeted in the past month, down nearly 48% on its post-election peak. Gaby Hinsliff reports in the Guardian the clear message: “the Tesla boycott really irks him”. If anything would bolster support for the boycott, that will!

On Saturday, at least one hundred thousand Serbians flooded the streets of their capital in the largest protest in modern Serbia. Protesters oppose the government and the president Alexander Vučić, citing perceived widespread corruption, and Vučić‘s “increasingly autocratic” rule.
In November, a railway station canopy in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second largest city, collapsed and killed fifteen people standing below it, including two young children, and injured more. Protests catalysed by the incident, blamed on corruption in the awarding of contracts, soon spread across the country, fuelled by other anti-government sentiments regarding suppression of the press.
What started as vigils for those killed have swelled into these large-scale protests bolstered by students and professors, striking in order to campaign against the government’s corruption. The construction minister and many others have been indicted over the collapse, but this has done little to abate the demonstrations, many arguing that the government’s modus operandi on appearing to tackle corruption is to charge many and convict few.
Protests have been largely very peaceful, especially on the anti-government side, with the violence consistently instigated by pro-government forces, including police, and “masked provocateurs”. So, on Saturday there was a marked police presence separating pro-government protesters, including students who want to see the strike ended, and the anti-government demonstrators which may have numbered half a million. The Serbian ministry of the interior has denied the use of illegal sound cannons at the protest despite video evidence to the contrary and has been accused of intimidating protesters and trying to stifle the protests, having cancelled trains in and out of the city ostensibly for passengers’ safety.
The pro-Russian government has tried to shrug off the protests as funded by Western interests, but is reported to be more and more worried by the protests’ influence and has attempted to negotiate with protestors. This has had little success however, given that the education and student unions do not elect a leadership, but instead make decisions collectively, a move which serves to highlight their anti-corruption ideals, lacking a leader to be bribed or blackmailed. Distanced from opposition parties, which they claim are complicit in the political environment of their country, they have attracted widespread support in their protests from many other unions and organisations, especially but not limited to theatres, museums and other associations for members of the arts industry. They certainly don’t look like they’re going to slow down any time soon.

On Tuesday, Greenlanders went to the polls to elect their parliament, the Inatsisartut, in an election campaign dominated by discourse surrounding Trump’s imperialist aspirations.
Greenland, which has a registered voting population of forty thousand (about half a British constituency) elects thirty-one MPs to their parliament in a single nation-wide constituency. Seats are allocated proportionally by vote share with no official threshold but with a natural threshold of about 3%. In this election, with a turnout of 70%, this corresponds to around 1000 votes.
Greenland has six registered parties, which have historically tended to be fairly left of centre in general and can be roughly separated by their economic position and their approach to Danish independence. With twelve and ten seats respectively, the centre-left Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) and left-wing Siumut formed a coalition government before the election, characterised by their similar views on economic policies and their pro-environment stances, and their commitment to gradual independence from Denmark. In that final regard, they are joined by the opposition Democrats who held three seats but fall at least centre-right economically. Naleraq, a populist centre party for rapid independence, held four seats and Attasut, a centre-right Danish unionist party held two. The coalition looked set to remain in power. Then Trump was re-elected.
Faced with Trump’s desire to buy Greenland, and his refusal to rule out taking the state by military force, the opposition parties came out top - the Democrats surging to ten seats, and Naleraq to eight, while IA fell to seven, and Siumut to four. The Siumut heartlands, fishing communities, saw a rapid rise in Naleraq support, while IA haemorrhaged votes to the Democrats. So, Greenland too would not be immune to the post-COVID anti-government sentiments that have dominated European elections. Qulleq, a new pro-independence party, and the only one whose leader said he trusted Trump, failed to reach the threshold for representation, perhaps unsurprisingly.
The Democrats now face a challenging time in government, first faced with questions of the composition of their coalition, and then with the existential questions posed by the US’s increasingly expansionist rhetoric. Though the Democrats are expected to go into government with IA, environmental policies could prove too different to reconcile, with Naleraq champing at the bit to escape opposition. And once in government, how are they going to face up to Trump? The Democrats have expressed a desire for free association status, like that which the US has granted Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau, providing them economic and military support. But such a deal would hardly satiate the US president now, and given Greenland’s rich mineral wealth, he would surely want far more in return than free association would otherwise provide. Without military support from Denmark, what would stop Trump’s administration increasing economic or military pressure until Greenland has no option but to become a state, which 85% of Greelanders oppose, opening the door to far more liberal mining operations, and bowing to Trump’s dictatorial ambition. Greenland has uncertain times ahead.
Election results: Democrats: 30.3%, 10 seats; Naleraq: 24.8%, 8 seats; IA: 21.6%, 7 seats; Siumut: 14.9%, 4 seats; Attasut: 7.4%, 2 seats; Qulleq: 1.1%, 0 seats.

I don’t want to give the impression that my opinion doesn’t inform all my writing on this blog, however, as this piece is distinct from the above in that it is rhetoric-led informed by current events, rather than current events-led, I have titled it such.

This past week debate has intensified in the House of Lords regarding the abolition of the right of hereditary peers to take up seats in the upper house. As it currently stands, as a compromise left-over from Blair’s New Labour years, the non-royal dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, and hereditary barons, of which there are 801, elect 75 from their number to sit in the chamber. 15 are elected by the whole House of Lords, and 2, the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain, take their seats by virtue of their offices. The government wishes to remove all but those final 2, who have constitutional roles. What was merely intended as a temporary measure in the pursuit of more radical change in 1999 has entrenched itself as normal running of our upper house for the past quarter of a century.
Note that the 75 are not all elected by every hereditary peer, but that 42 are elected by Conservative hereditary peers, 2 by Labour peers, 3 by Lib Dem peers, and 28 by crossbench peers, numbers distributed according to their strength in 1999. Once elected, they remain in the house until their deaths, and the number of peers allotted to each group is not subject to review.
We are the only major European power to afford legislative power to aristocrats by virtue of their birth, and it is utterly undemocratic, and in a modern world, disgraceful. It is the stuff of dystopia to provide power to a very small group of patriarchs of a very small group of very wealthy families, and yet it carries on in the UK without much thought.
So far, peers have tabled 144 amendments to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, each of which will have to be discussed. While many are reasonable, and some much more ambitious than the government is considering at this point, the sheer number of insubstantial amendments has been interpreted as a cynical attempt by Conservative peers to annoy the government into some compromise. Compromise on what? In 2021, Labour laid out plans to abolish the Lords in favour of an Assembly of Nations and Regions, which would be elected, and which would provide voice to underrepresented areas of the UK in particular, a style of upper house used by many European bicameral legislatures. Even his plans to retire peers at 80 seems less likely as time goes on. This is the compromise!
One such amendment, tabled by Malcolm Sinclair, just a normal man who happens to be the 20th Earl of Caithness, serial Lords reform blocker, seeks to add at the beginning of the bill the overview: “This Act makes the House of Lords a second chamber whose membership is wholly nominated by the Prime Minister.” It has been a common rebuttal to the reform, that the removal of hereditary peers would make the House of Lords a house of the prime minister’s cronies, the hereditary peers sitting on their lofty high horses looking down on the rabble the commoner prime minister appoints. Do they ignore the Lady Chief Justice (I wonder how you can guess that she is a life peer?) or the six former Chiefs of the Defence Staff or the 47 professors when they come across them in the chamber? Even the former politicians, when appointed appropriately and fairly after years of loyal service to the country and not to the appointer, are very valuable members of a legislature that reviews and amends legislation. Not to mention, the fact that prime ministers regularly appoint suggestions from opposition parties, albeit in smaller numbers. Opaque or corrupt appointment to the Lords is a very important issue that needs to be addressed, especially in light of some of the appointments of the previous Conservative governments, but retaining the hereditary peers is a separate matter and does nothing to help this issue.
Another complaint brought by Conservative peers is that the move is merely a “nasty partisan” attempt by Labour to increase their strength in the Lords. How they do not realise how out of touch this is! It feels like a reasonable complaint – the Conservative hereditary peers currently outnumber the Labour hereditary peers 11-1. But last year Labour got 140% of the Conservative vote, not 9%. Such a stark and unrepresentative difference in the composition of the hereditary peers only serves to justify why they should not be afforded the privilege of seats in the legislature. Further, when Labour swept to power in 1997 and implemented their initial reforms, they made clear that by ennobling many new Labour peers, “for the transitional House, the Government [would] ensure that no one political party commands a majority in the Lords,” and that “The Government [planned] to seek only broad parity with the Conservatives.” Broad parity sounds pretty reasonable indeed when the previous government enjoyed a house where conservative peers outnumbered labour ones 4:1. In 2019, it was Boris Johnson who added so many Conservative peers that they enjoyed a majority of partisan lords for the first time since the government of John Major. By 2023, Johnson’s appointees included both Evgeny Lebedev (Baron of Hampton and Siberia), owner of The Evening Standard, and son of a former KGB agent and Russian oligarch, and “extraordinarily junior” 30-year-old parliamentary assistant and special advisor Charlotte Owen, whose appointment was described at the time by a government source as “impossible to defend, even as somebody who broadly thinks the current peerage system is right”.
I hope that in removing the hereditary peers, the clamour for a directly or indirectly elected upper house, or at least one whose appointments are bipartisan and intensely scrutinised, grows, until such an implementation is unavoidable. Only a quarter of Conservative voters support the current system. The 2010 Conservative Manifesto included support for an elected upper house, and they had fourteen years in which they achieved nothing. Lord Rosebury was calling for radical reform to the House of Lords when the year still began ‘18’.
Neither the Lords nor complacency can again be allowed to succeed in foiling reform of this undemocratic institution. If, when faced with a bill brought by an unpopular government, on its third prime minister, in its fourth year since an election, which flouts international law, they capitulate, then what legislative purpose do they serve? If lords (supposedly) cannot block any bill that the government is happy to dig in its heels and stand for, like Sunak’s Safety of Rwanda Bill, but instead must “acknowledge the primacy of the elected house”, then what legitimacy to block or slow a bill on their own reform do they have? Surely on reform, the primacy of the Commons is at its most significant. I hope the rest of the peers see it that way, but primarily I hope the government is insistent. After all, the Lords has admitted it: that’s all you need.

You might have noticed from the title that this article isn’t about politics. I happen to like tennis too!

On Sunday, 23-year-old Jack Draper, British no. 1, stormed to victory at the Indian Wells Open, to claim his first ATP 1000 level title. In doing so he reaches a new career high of 7th in the world, behind only Sinner, Zverev, Alcaraz, Fritz, Djoković, and Ruud. That’s pretty good company.
Seeded 13th, Draper received a bye to the round of 64, where he dispatched João Fonseca, winner of the 2024 ATP Next Gen Finals. Though he ranks outside the top 50, the 18-year-old Brazilian no. 1 beat world no. 9, Andrey Rublev at the Australian Open, and so will have been cause for concern; perhaps willed on by compatriot Jacob Fearnley’s loss to Fonseca in the first round, Draper beat him 6-4 6-0.
Then came three Americans: first Jenson Brooksby, former world no. 33 back from injury and on a protected ranking, then world no. 4 Taylor Fritz, and world no. 14 Ben Shelton. On home soil, all three lost in straight sets, Draper finding his form, winning 7-5 6-4, then 7-5 6-4, then 6-4 7-5. His dominant serve proved his greatest weapon in his third and fourth round matches, winning 90% of points on first serve, and a first serves in rate of 71% saw him through his match with Shelton.
But then came the biggest challenge. With Sinner serving a doping suspension and Zverev toppled by Griekspoor in the second round, four-time Grand Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz found himself in the not-so-uncommon position of highest-ranking player left in the draw. And he found himself set to play Draper. The match didn’t look like it would be close initially, Draper storming through the first set 6-1, only to lose the next 6-0. Ultimately the match statistics tell of a very even match, apart from one key metric: first serves in. Here, Draper’s 68% was enough to overcome Alcaraz’s 56% and see him win the third set 6-4, to take him to the final.
There, he met world no. 12 Holger Rune. With 10 aces, 4 breaks, and 59 points to Rune’s 39, Draper faced not a single break point, winning 6-2 6-2, to claim his third ATP Tour title, and his first at this level. With an ATP 250, an ATP 500, and an ATP 1000 title under his belt (and at the ‘fifth grand slam’ no less), all Draper needs is a Grand Slam to complete the set. One can hope!
Meanwhile, 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, stormed to victory in the Women’s singles to claim a second consecutive WTA 1000 title, becoming the youngest player to win multiple at this level. Between the twelve matches she has played at the two tournaments, six have been victories over Grand Slam champions, one over world no. 49 Vondroušová, two over world no. 8 Rybakina, two over world no. 2 Świątek, and one over world no. 1 Sabalenka, in the final of the Indian Wells, 2-6 6-4 6-3. She reaches a career high of world no. 6.