The government seems set to continue its showdown with the unions. Despite the threats of Christmases ruined by transport walkouts and the risk of deadly disruptions to healthcare from strikes by nurses and ambulance drivers, ministers are standing firm behind the line of pay restraint. The scene is set for another winter of discontent. The Tories’ political gamble is that the unions, not the government, will get the blame for this. They highlight the relatively good pay of some of the affected workers, the other benefits and security they enjoy, and the fact that private sector workers will probably be being squeezed just as much right now – if not more. They daren’t admit, however, the real issue of public pay pressure: ...

How much would you be willing to pay an artist for a portrait? £500? £200? How about $7.99 for 50? Over the last few days my social media feeds have been dominated by friends sharing Lensa selfies. I can appreciate why – it’s fascinating to see what AI art can achieve now. And seeing yourself through the eyes of an artist, even an artificial one, can be strangely transformative. But the way in which people are uncritically engaging with AI art is concerning. Machine learning software like Midjourney, DALL-E and Stable Diffusion (on which Lensa is built) is being "taught" how to draw by data-mining the work of human artists. This has been done under the auspices of research. No artists have ...

The government’s position on public sector pay – at least if anonymous briefings to the broadcaster Robert Peston and others are to be taken at face value – shows evidence either of poor economics or a risky political calculation, as ministers confront industrial disputes with railway workers, nurses and teachers. One part of the poor economics is a claim that the government has "run out of money". The other is that if it gave in, higher pay would fuel inflation, and that would make us all poorer. Little of this makes much sense. The government has not "run out of money". It could fund more generous public sector pay deals out of higher taxes; or it could cut public services, in other ...

Since the publication of Gordon Brown’s doorstop constitutional report for Labour Keir Starmer has been backed into a corner. Not only has he now committed to abolishing the House of Lords, which the report recommends, but he has also promised that he will do so in the first term of a Labour government.  The most powerful Labour government ever elected was unable to entirely remove hereditary peers from the upper house in 1999. Starmer’s challenge is even greater.  Theoretically, he has one thing in his favour: the idea of a new upper house seems broadly accepted, at least in theory. Brown and his friends in the media say that this is a plan whose time has come. Time to get rid of the Lords and to ...

There’s a type of tabloid story that goes viral every few weeks: a first-person article written by someone explaining how they managed to buy a house in their early twenties. These articles typically have an admonishing headline, such as “young people just don’t want to make sacrifices like I did”, or “I bought my first home at 23 on a low income… you can too” (both from the Sun this year). They are heavy on tips on budgeting for a brutally frugal lifestyle, and argue that the main barrier to young home ownership is extravagance and laziness. But always – always – buried in the piece is the confession of significant financial help from family. Many eventually admit they saved money by ...

At the age of 28, I find more and more of my friends uttering that well-worn phrase “monogamy isn’t natural”. Yes, I seem to be living in the era of open relationships, or ethical non-monogamy (ENM). I realise I might one day end up entering into an open relationship, just because everyone else in my generation does (the way we all keep a gratitude journal or BeReal). But mostly, I feel about open relationships the way I feel about Botox: it’s clearly a solution to the messy realities of the modern world for some people, and I’d never say never – but I’m just not sure it’s my thing. Which was fine, until I started to wonder whether this made ...

It was, of course, predictable that the SNP would dislike Gordon Brown’s proposed reforms to the British constitution. Under Nicola Sturgeon’s increasingly dogmatic leadership, any idea short of full independence for Scotland is now treated with contempt. The days when the nationalists were thoughtful gradualists seem long gone. And yet Brown’s proposals are considerably more radical for Scotland than anything the SNP has come up with in its 15 years of government. Sadly, devolution has stopped at the border, as the Scottish government has sought to accrue ever more power to itself through policies such as caps on council tax, police centralisation and current proposals to remove local authorities’ role within social care. Councils are struggling after years of funding restrictions imposed ...

There are two countries in the world. That, at least, is a conclusion you could easily come to if you were to listen to the voices of too many political obsessives in the UK, particularly in discussion of constitutional reform. The UK’s political elite are so obsessed with the US that they invariably reach for the superpower across the pond as their only paradigm – positive or negative – for their own politics. The latest offender is Simon Clarke, a minister under prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. In response to a pledge by the Labour leader Keir Starmer to abolish the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK parliament, Clarke tweeted: “Anyone who has looked at the institutionalised ...