7 AUGUST 2025 | OPINION
Votes for kids. Trains to Berlin. Corbyn’s comeback. Trump outshining Starmer. If you thought you were hallucinating, you weren’t. July 2025 was the month British politics finally snapped – and yes, every bit of it actually happened.
I needed some time to wrap my own head around July before I could even begin to explain it to anyone else. If you spent the month thinking “surely not”, you’re not alone. No, you’re not insane. This is just Britain now.
The government started the month by laying out the red carpet for French President Emmanuel Macron, hosting a Windsor state banquet to “reset” relations with France. Jonathan Powell’s fingerprints were everywhere – he’s been orchestrating everything from the Chagos Deal to this month’s Palestine Recognition notion – his influence in Downing Street is now undeniable.
Nobody is really sure if Morgan McSweeney is still running the show or if Number 10 is just a holding pen for powerbrokers and fixers. The sense of power drifting from the official team to shadowy advisers grows every week.
Then came the Kensington Treaty with Germany: a defence and migration pact, and the promise of a London-Berlin high-speed rail link in a country where you can barely get from Manchester to London without a replacement bus. That’s now the bar for credibility.
No, you’re not hallucinating – Government Ministers actually promised trains to Berlin, while the UK can’t even fix its own railways.
As the flags came down, Parliament rushed through the Elections Bill – votes for sixteen-year-olds, not to repair democracy but to prop up Labour’s urban base now threatened by Corbyn’s return. Starmer has spent the month losing public rows between his own senior women, with Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves making headlines for their Commons spat. ‘Crying in the Commons’ is now both a political meme and, thanks to the Oasis reunion, a decent shot at a chart hit.
While Labour tears itself apart, Rachael Maskell was suspended for speaking her mind, Diane Abbott was sent to purgatory again, and party discipline has become a national joke. Corbyn’s ‘Your Party’, launched with Zarah Sultana, pulled in eighty thousand sign-ups in a week, instantly going from a media punchline to an existential threat for Labour’s Left. The more Starmer clamps down, the more those voters slip away.
[Certain far-left sources believe the true figure to be closer to seven hundred thousand sign-ups, though this remains unconfirmed – Ed.]
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch’s Tory reshuffle made less noise than the air conditioning in Portcullis House, but at this stage, after fourteen years of managed decline, a non-event is as good as it gets for the Conservatives. They should count themselves lucky that almost nobody paid enough attention to be disappointed.
The rot is everywhere. The NHS saw yet another strike: fifty thousand junior doctors walked out for five days, nurses are restless, and paramedics are burnt out. Trade union tension is at fever pitch, with the BMA and Unite taking swings at the Government and each other.
Unite even suspended the Deputy PM’s membership of their union, though no-one seems quite sure whether she ever actually joined. There’s a growing suspicion that even these stand-offs are being orchestrated to make the unions look tough, while giving the government an alibi for collapse.
On immigration, the small boats crisis set yet another record: over 25,000 Channel crossings by July, another ‘return deal’ with France announced, yet no progress made – and the spectacle of Ministers promising crackdowns while the system crumbles in real time.
Another NHS strike, another Channel crisis, another round of reshuffles nobody remembers. No, you’re not stuck in a time loop.
Starmer’s biggest international play of the month was Palestine. Jonathan Powell’s hand on the tiller again, with the UK Government announcing it will recognise a Palestinian State at the UN, unless Israel delivers peace, ceases West Bank annexations, and achieves the impossible.
This was not an accident, not incompetence. This was a clear, calculated throw to the Muslim vote and to the progressive wing of Labour, both now flirting with Corbyn’s new movement. The announcement was heavy on statehood, barely a mention of Hamas, and the message to Israel was simple: you’re alone.
This was design, not error. Israel was hung out to dry, Hamas emboldened, and Starmer’s team kept just enough distance to say it was all for “peace”. Starmer’s pledge on Palestine is basically Instagram activism with a flag attached. You are not dreaming this.
Meanwhile, the Afghan intelligence leak and the superinjunction scandal broke – confidential information exposed, British officials and sources put at risk, and the whole thing covered up under a blanket of legal threats and secrecy. National security undermined, public trust shredded, and not a single resignation. Fourteen years of Tory rot is now not just a legacy – it’s the operating model.
On the cultural front, London’s Trans+ Pride march was the largest in British history –over 100,000 people – only this year it went further, openly defying the Supreme Court and any notion of legal or scientific reality. The government’s response was to try to ignore the law and the marchers alike, but with votes and factions in play, Ministers would rather risk a constitutional crisis than offend either side.
Then, through it all, Reform UK and Nigel Farage remained ever-present – waving flags, posing for cameras, and calling their nostalgia routine a policy agenda. His cult followers are happier than pigs in… well, you know. When will people realise he’s actually worse than Starmer? If you think Britain’s mess is a two-party disaster, you’re about to get a crash course in what comes next.
If we’re calling flag-waving a substitute for practical policy, Reform UK’s cultists are the happiest in Britain. The second shoe is going to leave one hell of a mark.
And, as if to cap the month’s circus, Donald Trump descended upon Scotland, played a round at Turnberry, met Starmer behind closed doors, and reminded everyone that in the game of optics, Britain is always the junior partner. Another state visit is planned, and it’s already clear whose show this is.
Every one of these things happened, one after another after another. Pageantry, policy, panic, and punchlines – all at once. If you made it through July thinking Britain had finally lost its mind, you’re correct.
No, you’re not hallucinating. Yes, you really are expected to take it seriously. And yes, the next headline will probably be even stranger.
I’ll keep documenting it, not because I expect any of it to make sense, but because you deserve to know: you’re not the crazy one. They are.
