Nige and Honest Bob want to turn politics into a downmarket reality gameshow

Nige and Honest Bob. Honest Bob and Nige. Reform’s answer to the Chuckle Brothers. Robert Jenrick is just about the only other member of Reform UK that Nige will be seen dead with now. Apart from Richard Tice, everyone’s favourite fake-tanned beta male

Was Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ on right or left? | Letters

Your editorial (11 March) is correct in insisting that the economist and philosopher Adam Smith used “invisible hand” only once in The Wealth of Nations: to discuss investing at home or abroad, not as a general description of economic structure.If the capital is invested at home, the decision to do that being purely a selfish and personal one, then, as if led by an invisible hand, this benefits the domestic economy.Which is true, so we’d better be careful about deterring investment at home through the confiscatory taxation of either the wealth or the profits from having benefited the society by investing at home. Tim WorstallSenior fellow, Adam Smith Institute, London You address one popular legend with evidence from another; the idea that Marx was an advocate of the “iron law of wages”. In reality, Marx, like Smith, believed that growth could lift wages and living standards in a society defined by wage labour and capital; but he also believed that the transcendence of the wages system was desirable, or else workers would be temporarily “encrusting their chains with gold”

UK has flown 100,000 nationals out of Middle East since Iran conflict began

The number of UK nationals flown back from the Middle East since the start of the conflict with Iran reached 100,000 on Tuesday, Britain’s foreign secretary has said.Yvette Cooper told parliament this is a third of the 300,000 who were in the region at the outset of hostilities, many of whom were stuck when airspace was closed. The figure included tourists and Gulf residents who have temporarily left.Fellow MPs urged Cooper to help many British citizens who were still stuck in the region and those who were said to be struggling to get extensions for visas in the countries where they had gone on holiday before the US and Israeli strikes on Iran.Cooper also provided an update on Britain’s part in discussions that could see an international coalition involved in opening the strait of Hormuz, adding that this was “separate from the conflict”

Being in Sinn Féin not the same as being in the IRA, Gerry Adams tells high court

Gerry Adams has told the high court that opponents of Sinn Féin have repeatedly sought to conflate the political party he led with the IRA, as he denied ever being a member of the Irish Republican Army.Giving evidence in London watched by victims of IRA bombings, the 77-year-old, credited with helping to bring about the peace process that ended the Troubles, also rejected accusations that he had ever led the paramilitary organisation or sat on its army council.Adams is being sued for symbolic “vindicatory” damages of £1 each by John Clark, Jonathan Ganesh and Barry Laycock. They claim he was an IRA member, sat on its army council and was culpable for the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, and the London Docklands and Manchester bombings in 1996 in which they were respectively injured.Adams, who entered the witness box wearing a shamrock and a badge of the Palestinian flag, said in his witness statement: “To be clear, membership of the political party, Sinn Féin, does not equate to membership of the IRA

Iran war cannot be ’windfall’ for Putin, says Starmer, as Zelenskyy arrives in UK

Keir Starmer will host Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Tuesday as the prime minister warns US-Israeli strikes on Iran cannot be allowed to become a “windfall for Putin”.Zelenskyy’s visit will come on the day of the government deadline for the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich to pay proceeds from his sale of Chelsea FC to victims of the Ukraine war.The former Chelsea owner is now expected to face legal action, having insisted that the £2.5bn raised by the sale is his to allocate, including to Russian victims of the war.The British government warned Abramovich last year he must release the cash, or he could be taken to court

One day Keir Starmer might say what he really thinks of Trump. But not today | John Crace

It was a message that could just as easily have been given via a ministerial statement in the Commons. But Keir Starmer needs every break he can get at the moment and he wasn’t going to pass up the chance to look like a world leader at a press conference in Downing Street. The advantages were obvious. No need to have to listen to Kemi Badenoch drone on for five minutes with her revisionist fantasies in reply. Avoid the danger of loads of backbench MPs observing that President Trump is a deranged halfwit who doesn’t know what he’s doing