26 AUGUST 2025 | OPINION
August was sold as a vintage for Westminster: migrant hotels closing, Lucy Connolly finally silenced, and Trump’s Alaska summit setting the stage for order. Instead, the hotels stayed open, Connolly went on the rampage, and Ukraine remained a pawn — though Trump’s team at least had the sense to lower expectations. What we got was not Pol Roger in crystal flute, but warm White Lightning in a dirty mug.
August is usually ‘Silly Season’, when the Commons empties and politics takes a breather. This year, it became Silly Season on steroids. Every supposed breakthrough was sold as champagne, and every single one turned out to be flat cider in a chipped glass.
The UK-France migrant-swap deal was hailed as a breakthrough – one irregular migrant returned for every asylum-seeker Britain would accept from France. Ministers spun it as decisive action. In practice, it was pass-the-migrant, not problem solved. The boats still came, the hotels still filled, the costs still ballooned. For all the spin, taxpayers remain trapped in the same racket, while aid money still flows to nuclear-armed Pakistan.
The Bell Hotel in Epping was another supposed win. Protesters declared victory when it closed. In reality, it was a High Court ruling, not policy. The Home Office is appealing anyway. The hotel’s doors may have shut, but the system behind them stayed wide open.
Even the protests themselves became part of the charade. The ‘Pink Ladies’ dominated headlines with their high-vis resistance. Labour MPs countered with claims of ‘abuse’, trying to flip the narrative. Each side claimed a win. Neither solved a thing. The asylum system buckled on untouched.
Then came Lucy Connolly. Her case was meant to be a neat conclusion: guilty, punished, contained. Instead, her release turned her into a political wrecking ball. Reunited with her family, meeting Trump’s people, suing her critics and hammering ‘Two-Tier Keir’. The Ricky Jones ruling only amplified the sense of selective justice. What was meant as closure became a new opening — raw, messy, and politically explosive.
Nigel Farage – never one to miss a photo-op – unveiled a deportation blitz as his silver bullet. But it was the very policy he dismissed as unworkable just months ago. Now, it’s his grand solution – it isn’t. His attacks on Robert Jenrick, meanwhile, might look like swagger, but threaten to fracture Reform’s already fragile base. Promises of vintage fizz, delivery of corner-shop cider.
Internationally, Trump’s Alaska summit was packaged as global gravitas: jets roaring, cameras flashing, pundits dissecting the optics. In substance, Ukraine remains a pawn, the war continues, and little has changed. The only clever trick was that Trump’s team set the bar low from the outset. When the best defence of a summit is “we told you not to expect much”, it says it all.
Back home, Sir Keir Starmer tried his own show of statesmanship by recognising Palestine. Framed as principle, spun as moral courage, it instead looked like appeasement. The anti-Semitism question was back in the bloodstream within hours. The Guardian filled its pages with famine coverage from Gaza in a desperate effort to prop it up. The public didn’t buy it.
Meanwhile, the economy was meant to be ‘resilient’. Reeves spun stability. What we saw instead was whispers of an IMF bailout, inflation still biting, jobs collapsing, and Claire’s the latest chain to vanish from the high street. Charlie Mullins’ cry for her imprisonment was melodramatic, but it channelled some real fury. Business leaders see a government suffocating them and calling it steady hands.
Cultural life saw no respite either. Notting Hill Carnival was trumpeted as Europe’s great celebration. A million revellers, the “best of London”. On the ground: over a hundred arrests before it began, 140 in total by Sunday… stabbings, assaults, and emergency workers attacked. A parade dressed up as pride, experienced as disorder.
And looming in the background, the Online Safety Act finally sank its teeth in. Two years after Royal Assent, age checks arrived in July. PornHub traffic collapsed, while VPN use soared by 500 percent. A victory for child safety, we were told. But children remain just as exposed, while adults are treated like children themselves. Ofcom now swells into a Ministry of Truth, brandishing vague ‘harm’ clauses. Reports even swirled of Katie Lam’s Commons speech being blocked online – sixteen-year-olds now old enough to vote, but apparently too delicate to hear their own MPs. A win for safety? Or just another bitter gulp from a dirty mug?
Even the so-called good news curdled. Heathrow’s £49 billion expansion was announced as a victory for growth, only to be ambushed instantly by Labour’s Net Zero caucus and the Mayor of London. Topshop’s return was sold as revival, but it’s propped up by state subsidy in a market starved of private investment. Asylum for Hong Kong activists and the halting of China’s ‘super-embassy’ felt like some rare wins, but Britain still bends under Beijing’s influence.
Perhaps the most telling moment of all was what barely happened. The 80th anniversary of VJ Day passed with almost no notice. Yet the flag wars raged: ‘Operation Raise the Flag’ plastered Union Jacks nationwide, while in Birmingham, officials hesitated to take down a Pakistani flag. A country that once liberated others now dithers over its own symbols.
August was sold as Pol Roger – a vintage of victories. But by the month’s end, what we were poured was warm White Lightning in a dirty mug — flat, bitter, and leaving nothing but a hangover. The only question now is how many more months of hollow wins the country can stomach before the bottle finally runs dry.
