Latest news with #TonyBlair
Daily Mail
14 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Britain's annus horribilis under an accidental PM
In an Ipsos/Mori survey conducted exactly a year after the 1997 election, Sir Tony Blair 's popularity was even greater than when he steered his party to its momentous victory. Labour was polling at a thumping 54 per cent – 11 points higher than on election day and his personal approval ratings were similarly sky-high. Crucially, his backbench MPs adored him, having been propelled back to relevance after 18 years in the wilderness. There were a few exceptions, but the idea of large-scale rebellion was unthinkable. Compare and contrast with Sir Keir Starmer 's abject first year in office. The Daily Mail said from the start that his was a 'loveless landslide'. And so it has proved. He is the most unpopular incoming PM on record. His approval rating of minus-39 is a staggering 83 points behind where Sir Tony was at the same stage. Labour is also languishing behind Reform UK in the polls, his backbenchers are in open revolt and he has been forced into three humiliating policy U-turns inside a month. Meanwhile, the growth he so confidently promised has atrophied, the UK's already frightening debt and deficit are ballooning and his Chancellor's plans to 'fix the foundations' of the economy are in tatters. After the latest rebellion over welfare reform, she must find upwards of £3.2billion to balance her sums. This is sure to mean more punishing tax rises – breaking yet another flagship promise. Rachel Reeves is now a lame-duck Chancellor, who will have to seek the permission of her backbench colleagues for any major spending reform. She is clearly living on borrowed time. Her boss may be a little more secure – but the storm clouds are gathering. Having forced him into climbdowns on two key policies, his dissident MPs smell blood. Rebellion may become an addiction. Even with the concessions, the welfare Bill remains a mess and may well fail to pass in the Commons on Tuesday. If it does, Sir Keir's authority will be shot, and rumours will swell about a leadership challenge. It would be no great surprise. In many ways he is an accidental prime minister. Despite his huge majority, only one in five of those on the electoral roll voted for him. He won by default, because the Tories defenestrated their biggest electoral asset, then dissolved into a dysfunctional, unelectable rabble. Not being a Conservative was enough to sweep Sir Keir into power, but we quickly discovered he has feet of clay. The truth is he's a man of few real convictions and knows little about the politics of government. He paid billions to surrender the Chagos Islands on spurious legal grounds and absented himself from historic debates on assisted suicide and late-term abortion. Now, in just 12 months, he has lost control of his party. So, what happens next? Can he recover, or is he a permanent hostage to his party's class-warrior Left? Either way the next four years could be horrendous for anyone with a private sector job, savings, property or a pension pot. The Right must use this time to resolve its differences and unite. The Tories and Reform together currently command 46 per cent of the popular vote, comfortably enough for a super-majority. By 2029, the country will be even more on its knees than today. If neither Kemi Badenoch nor Nigel Farage can beat Labour on their own, it is their patriotic duty to do so together.
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Starmer is a charlatan – Labour should dump him for Rayner
Tony Blair was obsessed with his place in the history books; Gordon Brown with duty. Even David Cameron represented something: class privilege and entitlement. John Major was the 1950s made flesh. But what does Keir Starmer stand for? Britain is in the unfortunate position of having a leader with seemingly no beliefs whatsoever. He doesn't appear to be in politics for sheer venal greed and narcissism, but nor is he in politics for any higher purpose. He clearly has no principles, as he abandons every position he's ever held. Starmer has just committed Britain to spending 5% of GDP on defence in the face of Russian threats. But what values is he protecting? To protect a nation, you must invest it with some purpose, some beliefs, to justify the cost in blood and gold. I know what I – and most folk – would deem the values we seek to protect: fairness, freedom, decency, the right to dissent, standing up for the underdog. Aren't these the so-called 'British values' we were taught once underpinned this country? Read more from Neil Mackay: Does Starmer defend fairness? No. He was about to degrade Britain's disabled people until his own rebel MPs pulled him back from the brink. He proposed cruelty, not decency. Does Starmer protect freedom? No. He has decided to proscribe a protest group as a terrorist organisation. Palestine Action sprayed red paint on military aircraft after breaking into an RAF base. Should the activists be prosecuted? Yes. They may have been standing up for their beliefs, but they broke in and committed criminal damage. So yes, prosecute them. But to label them terrorists is dangerously authoritarian. You may not like what Palestine Action did, but what happens if the next protest group to go too far is fighting for something you believe in? Should your views be bracketed with terrorism? Indeed, proscribing Palestine Action forces us to look back into Starmer's past as we ask: 'what – if anything – does this man hold dear?' As a human rights lawyer, Starmer defended a protester arrested after cutting an RAF base fence while carrying a flammable substance. He argued the behaviour was legal as the protester was acting to prevent a wider crime: the Iraq War. Starmer also represented Lindis Percy, arrested over 500 times for breaking into and protesting outside air force bases. Lawyers defend clients whose actions they don't support – we know that. You cannot equate a lawyer's defence work with their own beliefs. However, it isn't quite so simple with Starmer. In 2020, when running for Labour's leadership, he featured Percy in a campaign video. She said: 'Keir defended me, and many others, to bring public scrutiny and awareness of the presence of US visiting forces so that we can live in a more peaceful and less secretive society.' So as a human rights lawyer, did he actually believe in the right to protest, or was he just doing whatever the job required? Was he merely, as now, holding office for the banal sake of holding office? Did he believe in the right to protest when he became leader, and then dump this belief – as he has dumped so many beliefs – when it was convenient? Would human rights lawyer Starmer believe in Palestine Action's right to protest? (Image: Palestine Action) Indeed, the word 'belief' seems inappropriate. Nobody simply abandons beliefs. You can, though, abandon a 'pose'. Indeed, the word 'belief' seems inappropriate. Nobody simply abandons beliefs. You can, though, abandon a 'pose'. Is Starmer simply governing as he imagines the right-wing press wishes him to govern? Is he a creature of the Daily Mail, forever trying to run ahead of headlines he fears? He's an arrogant man. That's clear. Labour rebels were simply 'noises off', he said. Until they weren't, of course, when he realised he faced defeat over his brutish disability cuts. It all fits with his abandonment of every principle Labour stands for: he hurts the poor and cossets the wealthy; he sucks up to power and tramples the weak. Until the rebels got him in a stranglehold, Starmer's welfare bill would have pushed 250,000 disabled people into poverty, along with 50,000 children. Even with the u-turn, he's created a two-tier system where those who become disabled in the future will be worse off than those disabled today. He plays a monstrous game with the lives of others. Sign up to Unspun and read Neil Mackay every Friday. In one month, Starmer u-turned three times: on the winter fuel payment, on holding an inquiry into grooming gangs, and now on disability benefits. Between taking over as Labour leader and becoming Prime Minister, Starmer u-turned 27 times, including on the combustible issue of trans rights. In 2022, he claimed to believe that 'transwomen are women'. Come April this year, that was no longer his belief. Starmer is a charlatan, a man without character, a cipher. He's either so weak or so amoral that he is unfit to hold office. There's still a long way to go before the next UK election. Labour has the time to dump this empty vessel, this dangerous shape-shifter, and choose a better leader who just might save them from ruin at the ballot box. Perhaps, Angela Rayner?
Telegraph
a day ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
EU: Brexit to blame for Britain's migrant crisis
Brexit was the main driver of Britain's worsening migration crisis, an official European Union research document has claimed. The study insists that remaining in the bloc would have helped UK governments tackle the influx of arrivals on small boats from the Continent. The Brussels paper claims the post-Brexit 'liberalisation of migration laws' caused a record increase in net-migration figures from 248,000 at the time of the 2016 EU referendum to 906,000 seven years later. 'Despite concerns about migration prompting many British citizens to vote in favour of the UK's withdrawal from the EU in the Brexit referendum in June 2016, the country has paradoxically attracted significantly more migrants since leaving,' the paper's authors wrote. The EU research paper, entitled 'The Brexit paradox: How leaving the EU led to more migration', was drawn up by the member's research service of the European parliament this month. It was produced for MEPs to inform them about the UK's migration problem ahead of future post-Brexit discussions and represents some of the strongest language from Brussels on the issue. The paper compared Brexit to the 2004 enlargement of the EU, when Sir Tony Blair's New Labour government opted not to put restrictions on the arrivals from the bloc's 10 incoming countries. 'This is not the first time that decisions by the UK government have led to a major increase in net migration. When 10 countries joined the EU, the UK government decided, unlike most EU countries, not to impose any restrictions, which resulted in a greater than expected influx of migrants,' it said. Representatives of the EU's only elected institution have often gone to great lengths to paint Britons' Brexit decision in a bad light. Research projects like this one are normally commissioned by individual MEPs or their offices. But it appears this paper was produced at the initiative of the EU parliament's research service. The main thrust of the paper's argument is that a decline in the number of EU migrants to Britain was offset by a significantly larger influx of non-EU immigrants. The paper cited the former Conservative government's policies which threw open the door to the arrivals of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, Hong Kongers and foreign students. But it also said the number of small-boat crossings had dramatically increased in the years following the UK's departure from the EU and the end of the transitional period in January 2021. 'There has been a notable shift in the composition of these migrants in terms of age and nationality. Prior to 2016, most migrants came from the EU, but now most come from outside the EU,' the research claimed. 'It could be argued that leaving the EU has limited the UK's ability to tackle irregular migration, as it is no longer able to send migrants back to the EU country where they first arrived,' it added. The EU's Dublin agreement once enabled the UK to return migrants to the bloc if it was shown they had travelled through another European country and failed to claim asylum there. Southern member states, such as Spain and Greece, have consistently rejected the possibility of a replacement being negotiated. However, Sir Keir is in talks over an individual 'one in, one out' migration deal with France. The scheme could allow the UK to send back channel migrants within weeks in exchange for the UK taking asylum seekers from France. Using figures previously published by the Home Office, the paper claims that 93 per cent of small-boat arrivals between 2018 and March 2024 had applied for asylum. 'About three quarters were successful in their asylum bid,' it added. In 2018, there were just 299 reports of illegal Channel crossings, according to EU research. This number shot up to a peak of 45,744 in 2022, the year after Britain quit the bloc's Single Market and its migration policies. While discussing the spiralling illegal migration figures, the research claims that Britain has become a less attractive place for EU citizens to live after Brexit. It blames new rules making it harder for people from the bloc to live and work in the UK. UK and EU to work closer on migration After the end of freedom of movement, there were labour shortages in Britain. The then-Tory government offered non-EU Albanians work picking fruit and vegetables after numbers of EU seasonal workers fell after Brexit. EU citizens make up 70 per cent of abattoir staff in the UK and the industry is struggling to recruit domestically as it endures a labour shortage. Most migrant workers are brought in to work in skilled, specialised roles in the abattoir and boning halls. Those jobs are the hardest to recruit British workers for. 'Another factor could be the drop in the value of the pound, meaning that money earned in the UK would be worth less,' the report said. Britain and the EU have agreed to work more closely together on tackling illegal migration as part of the Prime Minister's post-Brexit reset. The deal signed by Sir Keir and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission's president, paved the way for more intelligence sharing to crack down on people smugglers. But the pact contained no detailed provisions that would allow the UK to send would-be asylum seekers arriving illegally in the country back to the EU. The only concrete initiatives signed were for the creation of a new UK-EU 'youth experience' scheme, making it easier for young people to live and work in both territories, as well as a return to the bloc's Erasmus university exchange programme.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Starmer's stormy first year ends in crisis - now he faces a bigger battle to turn it around
By the time polls closed at 10pm on 4 July 2024, the Labour Party knew they were likely to return to government - even if they could not quite bring themselves to believe it. For Sir Keir Starmer, reminiscing 10 months later in an interview with me, it was an "incredible moment". Instantly, he said, he was "conscious of the sense of responsibility". And yes, he confessed, a little annoyed that his landslide victory was not quite as big as Sir Tony Blair's had been in 1997. "I'm hugely competitive," the prime minister said. "Whether it's on the football pitch, whether it is in politics or any other aspect of life." Sir Keir watched the exit poll with a small group of advisers as well as his wife, Victoria, and his two teenaged children. Even in that moment of unsurpassable accomplishment, this deeply private prime minister was caught between the jubilation of his aides and the more complex reaction of his children, who knew their lives were about to change forever. Looking back, the prime minister said, he would tell himself: "Don't watch it with your family - because it did have a big impact on my family, and I could see that in my children." It's important to remember how sunny the mood in the Labour Party was at that moment - because the weather then turned stormy with remarkable speed. As the prime minister marks a year in office next week - which he will spend grappling with crises at home and abroad - British politics finds itself at an inflection point, where none of the old rules can be taken for granted. So, why exactly was Sir Keir's political honeymoon so short-lived? And can he turn things around? Many members of the new cabinet had never been to Downing Street until they walked up to the famous black door on 5 July to be appointed. Why would they have been? The 14 turbulent years of opposition for the Labour Party meant that few had any experience of government. This was a deficiency of which Sir Keir and his team were acutely aware. As the leader of the opposition, he had spent significant time in 'Privy Council' - that's to say, confidential, meetings with civil servants to understand what was happening in Ukraine and the Middle East. He also sought knowledge from the White House. Jake Sullivan, then US President Joe Biden's National Security Adviser, told me that he spoke to the future prime minister "every couple of months" to help him "make sense of what was happening". "I shared with him our perspective on events in the Middle East, as well as in Ukraine and in other parts of the world," says Sullivan. "I thought he asked trenchant, focused, sharp questions. I thought he was on point. "I thought he got to the heart of the matter, the larger issue of where all of these things were going and what was driving them. I was impressed with him." Domestic preparations were not as smooth. For some, especially on the left of the Labour Party, this government's difficulties began with an over-cautious election campaign. Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the trade union Unite, told me that "everyday people [were] looking for change with a big C. They were not looking for managerialism". It's a criticism with which Pat McFadden, a senior cabinet minister, having run the campaign, is wearily familiar. "We had tried other strategies to varying degrees in 2015, 2017, 2019, many other campaigns previously - and they'd lost. "I had one job. To win." Having made his name as a prominent member of Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet, Sir Keir won the party leadership in 2020 offering Labour members a kind of Corbynism without Corbyn. But before long he broke decisively with his predecessor. In the campaign this meant not a long list of promises, but a careful approach. Reassurance was the order of the day: at the campaign's heart, a focus on what Labour wouldn't do: no increase in income tax, national insurance or VAT. Yet a big part of preparing for government was not just the question of what this government would do, but how it would drive the government system. For that, Sir Keir turned to Sue Gray. Having led the Partygate investigation into Boris Johnson, Gray was already unusually high-profile for an impartial civil servant. Her close colleagues were stunned when in 2023 she agreed to take up a party political role as Sir Keir's chief of staff. "It was a source of enormous controversy within the civil service," says Simon Case, who until a few months ago as cabinet secretary was head of the civil service. Sue Gray's task was to use her decades of experience of the Whitehall machine to bring order to Sir Keir's longstanding team. She started work in September 2023, and the grumblings about her work began to reach me weeks, or perhaps even days, later. Those in the team she joined had expected her to bring organisational clarity. Tensions came when she involved herself in political questions too. Gray also deliberately re-prioritised the voices of elected politicians in the shadow cabinet over unelected advisers. Questions about what exactly her role should be were never quite resolved, in part because Rishi Sunak called the general election sooner than Labour had expected. Gray spent the campaign in a separate office from the main team, working with a small group on plans for the early days in government. Yet those back in Labour HQ fretted that, from what little they gleaned, that work was inadequate. A few days before the election those rumours reached me. I WhatsApped a confidant of Sir Keir to ask what they had heard of the preparation for government. "Don't ask," came the reply. "I am too worried to discuss it." What is unquestionable is that any prime minister would have struggled with the backdrop Sir Keir inherited. Simon Case described to me how, on 5 July just after Sir Keir had made his first speech on the steps of No 10, he had thwacked a sleepless new prime minister with "the heavy mallet of reality". "I don't think there are many incoming prime ministers who'd faced such challenging circumstances," he said, referring to both the country's economic situation and wars around the world. The King's Speech on 17 July unveiled a substantial programme, making good on manifesto promises: rail nationalisation, planning reform, clean energy investment. But those hoping for a rabbit out of the hat, a defining surprise, were disappointed. In so many crucial areas — social care, child poverty, industrial strategy — the government's instinct was to launch reviews and consultations, rather than to declare a decisive direction. As cabinet secretary, Case could see what was happening — or not happening — across the whole of government. "There were some elements where not enough thinking had been done," he said. "There were areas where, sitting in the centre of government, early in a new regime, the prime minister and his team, including me as his sort of core team, knew what we wanted to do, but we weren't communicating that effectively across all of government." Not just communication within government: for us journalists there were days in that early period where it was utterly unclear what this new government wanted its story to be. That made those early announcements, which did come, stand out even more: none more so than Chancellor Rachel Reeves's announcement on 29 July that she would means-test the winter fuel payment. It came in a speech primarily about the government's parlous economic inheritance. That is not what it is remembered for. Some in government admit that they expected a positive response to Reeves's radical frankness about what the government could and could not afford to do. Yet it sat in isolation - a symbol of this new government's economic priorities, with the Budget still three months away. Louise Haigh, then the transport secretary, remembered: "It came so early and it hung on its own as such a defining policy for so long that in so many voters' minds now, that is the first thing they think about when they think about this Labour government and what it wants to do and the kinds of decisions it wants to make." The policy lasted precisely one winter. Sir Keir and his chancellor have argued in recent weeks that they were able to change course because of a stabilising economy. McFadden was more direct about the U-turn. "If I'm being honest, I think the reaction to it since the decision was announced was probably stronger than we thought," he admits. At the same time the chancellor stood up to announce the winter fuel cuts, news was unfolding of a horrific attack in Southport. Misinformation about who had carried out the attack fuelled the first mass riots in this country since 2011, when Sir Keir had been the director of public prosecutions. Given the nature of the crisis, the prime minister was well placed to respond. "As a first crisis, it was dealing with a bit of the machinery of government that he instinctively understood - policing, courts, prisons," Case says. Sir Keir's response was practical and pragmatic — making the judicial system flow faster meant that by mid-August at least 200 rioters had already been sentenced, most jailed with an average term of two years. But in a way that was not quite clear at the time, the riots spawned what has become one of the defining attacks on the prime minister from the right: that of 'two-tier Keir'. The idea that some rioters were treated more harshly than other kinds of protesters had been morphed over time into a broader accusation about who and what the prime minister stood for. Sir Keir had cancelled his family holiday to deal with the riots. Exhausted, he ended the summer dealing with questions about his personal integrity in what became known as 'freebiegate'. Labour tiptoed cautiously through its first year - will it now decide to escape its own shadow? Why Labour is strengthening ties with China after years of rollercoaster relations Britain's energy bills problem - and why firms are paid huge sums to stop producing power Most of the gifts for which he was being criticised - clothing, glasses, concert tickets - had been accepted before the election but Sir Keir was prime minister now. Case told me there was a "naivety" about the greater scrutiny that came with leading the country. Perhaps more than that, there was a naivety in No 10 about how Sir Keir was seen. Here was a man elected in large part because of a crisis of trust in politics. He had presented himself as different. Telling voters that he had followed the rules was to miss the point — they thought the rules themselves were bust. By the winter of 2024, the sense of a government failing to get a grip of itself or a handle on the public mood, had grown. A chorus of off-the-record criticism, much of it strikingly personal, threatened to overwhelm the government. There were personal ambitions and tensions at play, but more and more insiders - some of them fans of Gray initially - were telling me that the way in which Sir Keir's chief of staff was running government was structurally flawed, with the system simply not working properly. Gray announced in early October that she had resigned because she risked becoming a "distraction". In reality, Sir Keir had sacked her after some of his closest aides warned him he risked a mutiny if he did not. Sue Gray was approached both for an interview and for her response to her critics but declined. To the end she retained some supporters in the cabinet including Louise Haigh. "I felt desperately sorry for her," she says. "It was just a really, really cruel way to treat someone who'd already been so traduced by the Tories - and then [was] traduced by our side as well." Sir Keir appointed Gray. He empowered Gray. And he dispensed with Gray. This was the prime minister correcting his own mistakes - an episode which came at a high political price. Yet on the world stage the prime minister continued to thrive, winning praise across political divides in the UK and abroad. Jake Sullivan, Biden's adviser, was impressed by Sir Keir's handling of US President Donald Trump, describing the Oval Office meeting where the prime minister brandished an invitation from the King as "the best I've seen in terms of a leader in these early weeks going to sit down with the current president". It's an irony that it is Sir Keir, who made his reputation trying to thwart Brexit, who has found for the UK its most defined diplomatic role of the post-Brexit era — close to the US, closer than before to Europe, at the fore of the pro-Ukraine alliance, striking trade deals with India and others. And it has provided him with something more elusive too: a story — a narrative of a confident, pragmatic leader stepping up on the world stage, acting as a bridge between other countries in fraught times. The risk, brought into sharp relief during the Israel-Iran conflict in recent days, is that Trump is too unpredictable for such a role to be a stable one. The international arena has sharpened Sir Keir's choices domestically as well. Even while making welfare cuts that have displeased so many in his party, the prime minister has a clearer and more joined-up argument about prioritising security in all its forms: through work, through economic prudence, through defence of the realm. And yet, for plenty of voters Sir Keir has found definition to his government's direction too late. Labour's poor performance last month in the local elections plus defeat at the Runcorn and Helsby by-election were a blow to Sir Keir and his team. It's far from unheard of for a governing party to lose a by-election, but to lose it to Reform UK on the same night that Nigel Farage's party hoovered up councils across England made this a distinctively new political moment. Two days afterwards, Paul Ovenden, Sir Keir's strategy director, circulated a memo to Downing Street aides, which I've obtained. It called for a "relentless focus on the new centre ground in British politics". The crucial swing voters, Ovenden wrote, "are the middle-age, working class, economically squeezed voters that we persuaded in the 2024 election campaign. Many of them voted for us in 2024 thinking we would fix the cost of living, fix the NHS, and reduce migration… we need to become more ruthless in pursuing those outcomes". For more than 100 of Starmer's own MPs, including many of those elected for the first time in that landslide a year ago, the main priority was ruthlessly dismantling the government's welfare reforms - plunging the prime minister as he approaches his first anniversary into his gravest political crisis yet. The stakes were beyond high. For the prime minister to have backed down to avoid defeat on this so soon after the winter fuel reversal raises questions about his ability to get his way on plenty else besides. So, if this first year has done anything, it has clarified the stakes. This is not just a prime minister and a Labour Party hoping to win a second term. They are trying to prove to a tetchy and volatile country that not only do they get their frustration with politics, but that they can fix it too. None of that will be possible when profound policy disagreements are on public display. Starmer's Stormy Year: A year on from the landslide election win, the BBC's Henry Zeffman talks to insiders about the challenges Labour has faced in government (BBC Radio 4, from 30 June 2025) Top picture credit: PA and Getty Images BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers to The Sandman – the seven best shows to stream this week
There has been no shortage of documentaries and dramas commemorating the 20th anniversary of the awful events around the 7/7 bombings in 2005. So while they were clearly a pivotal moment in British history, it's a challenge to find a point of difference. Liza Williams's series benefits from taking a considered view of how the attacks felt to British Muslims and also hears from former PM Tony Blair and Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of MI5 at the time of the attacks. The big-picture insights are fascinating, but it's the tiny details – such as the first responder who, out of respect, resolved to move victims' bodies 'as if they were asleep' – that really stick in the mind. Netflix, from Tuesday 1 July Showrunner Allan Heinberg has stated that it was always the intention to end this adaptation of Neil Gaiman's comic book fantasy in two seasons. Gaiman is now a controversial figure but there has still been disappointment at what is seen as the abrupt conclusion of the 10-volume series. It remains a stylishly goth-toned affair; Tom Sturridge returns as Morpheus/Dream, the semi-physical personification of dreams and nightmares. Morpheus is returning to hell – but this has terrifying implications for Earth, which will be receiving an apocalyptic visit from hell's ruler Lucifer Morningstar. Netflix, from Thursday 3 July A third season for this LGBTQ+ chatshow which is brisk and breezy while still getting stuck into weighty subjects. Munroe Bergdorf and Tayce are your hosts, coaxing guests into pinpointing their lightbulb moments. The series begins with makeup artist and influencer NikkieTutorials, who came out as transgender in 2020 after being blackmailed. Expect the conversation to touch on representation in the media and the need to inspire the next generation of trans kids. Other guests in the series include Amber Gill, Bimini and Pearl Mackie. Paramount+, from Sunday 29 June Netflix have cornered the market in visceral and intimate sports documentaries; the third season of this series follows every grunt, tantrum and pile-up from the 2024 Tour de France and acts as a delicious appetiser for this year's race. This time, there's added emphasis on the increasingly huge sums of money involved but even so, it's oddly comforting to see that the sheer wildness of this most extreme of sporting events remains intact. Le Tour is untameable and the closer to the heart of the peloton this show takes us, the clearer that becomes. Netflix, from Wednesday 2 July Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion Channel 4's Untold strand is notable for its efforts to explore the more disturbing aspects of online life. Here, Jordan Stephens of Rizzle Kicks fame takes a deep dive into sexual blackmail – which according to the National Crime Agency is now the most widespread form of image abuse in the UK. Stephens wants to understand the issue from the perspective of both perpetrator and victim and takes the radical step of allowing some very dodgy material to slip into his DMs before travelling to Nigeria in the hope of confronting his blackmailer. Channel 4, from Wednesday 2 July The terms of this cheerful school-set comedy get ever more truncated but after a short recess, it's back to continue its fourth season. Once again, there's a degree of seriousness underpinning the big-hearted set-pieces – this season's undercurrent has been an exploration of gentrification as a nearby golf club threatens the school's amenities. It's also seen the school rally round to save Ava's job. Maybe the tone-deaf and generally unpopular principal will learn from that solidarity but probably not – the conclusion to this storyline is admirably nuanced. Disney+, from Wednesday 2 July The search for wild new variations on the maverick cop formula goes on: Sight Unseen involves a homicide detective (Dolly Lewis's Tess Avery) who is diagnosed as clinically blind after she makes a mistake that nearly leads to the death of her partner. Naturally, she's unwilling to accept that this draws a line under her career in the field; instead, she uses an app to connect with a seeing-eye guide 3,000 miles away ('Mostly I help my clients buy bananas'). A premise that stretches credulity to breaking point and beyond. Paramount+, from Thursday 3 July
