This by-election isn’t about the seat — it’s about whether Labour’s control model still works when voters stop playing along. Right, so Andrew Gwynne has resigned as a Labour MP, which means a parliamentary by-election is now locked in, whether anyone likes it or not and that certainly applies to Keir Starmer, this being his first parliamentary test since conning his way into power 18 months ago. Coming as this likely is to coincide with May’s local elections, all the more attention will be on it, and the speculation is rife as to whether or not Andy Burnham might run, or whether another Manchester local boy in Zack Polanksi might have a run at it too, especially off the back of a dynamite party election broadcast last night. But above anything else, from this point on, Starmer’s Labour in name only party has to actively defend its authority in a place once regarded as so safe it was never in question and now not only is it in question, but by how much Labour might lose it by. But the fact is briefings are happening before candidates get named. Hypothetical scenarios are already being handled like threats. And control mechanisms within Labour are being discussed out loud, which only happens when people stop trusting the system to deliver the desired outcome This doesn’t stop at one seat. It doesn’t stay local. And it doesn’t end on polling day, because once a party has to manage its own voters as a risk in what was a very safe seat, all the pieces are in play for this to become absolute Hell for Keir Starmer. Right, so Andrew Gwynne has resigned as a sitting Labour MP for Gorton and Denton in Manchester and a parliamentary by-election has been triggered in a seat Labour has treated for years as safe. Gwynne won in 2024 with 50% of the vote, actually down on 2019 when he got 65% of the vote, so this is a safe as houses Labour seat, the kind of seat that if Labour can’t hold it, they are in existential crisis territory, second place in 2024 being Reform Uk who only got 15% by comparison. But all of their problems here have a common theme – Keir Starmer himself. Labour’s first problem is that this by-election lands at a moment when Labour has already tightened every internal bolt it can reach, centralised selection, cracked down on dissent dissent, and collapsed the difference between leadership and the party machine itself.

Trump is escalating his threats against Iran again, but he’s doing it after already showing exactly how far he was willing to go last time. Right, so Donald Trump is escalating the threats against Iran again. The language has hardened, the plans are back in circulation, the warnings are bigger, louder, more absolute and the machinery is being spun up as if this is the first time he’s done it all over again. But it isn’t. All of this is happening after an alleged strike was already prepared, talked up, and then either not authorised or called off at the last minute, depending on source, so is this more of the same now? Whether it is or not, it blows a hole straight through the idea that you can say the same thing again, louder, and pretend nothing happened in between, it’s like an inverse boy who cried wolf moment. Escalation was taken right to the point where it’s supposed to turn into action, and then it didn’t. So can we take Trump seriously this time? Should we? Probably safer to than not, but if it all gets watered down again, we shouldn’t be that surprised either. But with more assets en route to the Middle East all at the same time, is there a genuine difference this time? Right, so Donald Trump has ordered the military to draw up new strike plans against Iran. Carrier groups and air assets are moving to the region already, but now the language has hardened again, and talk of “wiping Iran from the face of the Earth” has been Trump’s latest refrain. The USS Abraham Lincoln has been redeployed, refuelling tankers and fighter squadrons have been repositioned as well now, and the White House is allowing the impression of imminence to hang in the air. This is not the same moment as the strike that was prepared and then pulled back earlier. It’s a new escalation returning after that decision. Trump flip-flopping over striking Iran, like that’s a calm and rational position. Everything unfolding now is happening in the shadow of the last time the line was reached and not crossed, begging the question as to whether this time it will. Iran has responded accordingly. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi did not issue a screaming denunciation or an emotional threat as perhaps western media might prefer. He didn’t shout. He didn’t posture. He set the terms and moved on. Maximum pressure had run its course, restraint wasn’t on offer anymore, and if Iran was hit, it would respond. That’s not how you talk if you think bombs are about to fall. That’s how you talk when you think the test already happened and you held. His language doesn’t dare Washington to act, it assumes Washington already showed its hand, and it shuts the door on the idea that saying it louder will fix that. The same logic runs through the assassination threats aimed at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As the war on Gaza drags on, BDS pressure is turning ordinary commercial links with Israel into reputational liabilities businesses no longer want. Right, so Boker Tov is an Israeli-owned food chain that’s been operating in Belgium, selling Israeli street food under a softened “Levantine” label, working on the quiet assumption that food sits above politics if you soften the language enough. Well it didn’t work. The chain has gone bankrupt, four restaurants have shut, and the owners have said the customers stopped coming once Gaza couldn’t be ignored. BDS strikes again. No ban from trading. No court ruling. No dramatic showdown. Just tables staying empty and the business no longer adding up. For a long time there’s been a lot of confidence that whatever Israel does, the consequences stay safely boxed in, something we commentators argue about while everyday commerce carries on unaffected. BDS has always sought to change that and businesses don’t survive the moment enough people decide they don’t want the association anymore. Consumer choice – you can’t fight it. But this is a bigger story than just one restaurant chain in Belgium. It’s about increasing numbers of people making similar choices outside Israel, not necessarily even as part of global BDS movements either, but also without that coordination and without permission, and so the story stops being about protest per se and starts being about Israeli reputation itself and no amount of Hasbara that can fix this when mindsets are simply shifting against you. Right, so Boker Tov has shut its doors in Belgium, filed for bankruptcy, and exited the market, and the owners have said plainly that organised boycott campaigns after Gaza cut the customer base out from under them. Four restaurants, gone, in a country Israel doesn’t govern, by decisions Israel didn’t authorise, through pressure Israel can’t regulate, which leaves consequences operating outside any diplomatic channel that used to cushion this kind of fallout.