Robert Hutton
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Robert Hutton
@roberthutton.co.uk
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RobDotHutton from the broken site. Parliamentary sketches and film columnist for The Critic, co-host of classic cinema love-in War Movie Theatre. New spy book "The Illusionist" is out now.
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roberthutton.co.uk
This week's episode of War Movie Theatre is on "Under Siege", a film full of terrible ingredients that somehow turns out to be really quite a lot of fun. (Much like our podcast, some would say.)

https://pod.fo/e/37457d
Seagal and Eleniak, both at their career high points.
January 10, 2026 at 11:27 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
One reason I'm so negative on Badenoch's Conservatives is that they've American-internet-brained themselves into positions that were always obviously terrible. This is from the start of October.

thecritic.co.uk/if-something...
Badenoch commits herself to copying the "success" of ICE. It wasn't hard to predict that this would be a mistake.
January 10, 2026 at 10:30 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
Britain's leaders think X's diversification into child porn-on-demand is "unacceptable". Although, in good news for people who want child porn on demand, they will continue to accept it. thecritic.co.uk/poli...
One of Farage’s revenue streams is X, the social media site that Ofcom urgently wishes to speak to about the ability of its Grok AI facility to undress women and generate child porn. He has been paid just under £13,000 by the company since entering parliament. Was he still comfortable taking money from the company? Cunningham gasped at the temerity of the question. Farage seemed briefly worried. He complained first of all that the parliamentary register of interests doesn’t allow him to offset his expenses. To be fair, it wasn’t set up for people who view being an MP as a money-making enterprise. But the short answer is that he will continue to take the X cash. Other party leaders aren’t on the X payroll, but their answers are hardly better. After PMQs we asked their spokespeople what they were doing about the company. Number 10 explained that the situation was “unacceptable”, although the prime minister’s continued presence on X suggests that he can, in fact, accept it. Badenoch’s s
January 8, 2026 at 8:56 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
An important part of Farage press events is keeping track of his changing positions on, well, everything. It helps to be wildly credulous. thecritic.co.uk/poli...
Over the course of the questions that followed, Farage’s mood, flitted between “wildly triumphalist” and “angrily snippy”. He was asked about his days as a teenage fan of 1930s strong-man politics. At the end of last year, he was apologising for this, but his position has shifted again, and now the stories are “complete made-up fantasies”. It is amazing that he can get away with such inconsistencies, but if the Conservatives play politics on the easy setting, Farage seems to have discovered a cheat mode. Not only does he have a TV channel that supports him so much it pays him hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, he has newspapers so supportive that the Daily Express asked him if the Conservatives shouldn’t be standing down candidates in his favour. There are news outlets in North Korea that would be embarrassed about that.
January 7, 2026 at 7:47 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
If the UK government had a Culture Secretary, that person would be in a position to take a view about whether child porn on demand was a good thing, or a bad thing. thecritic.co.uk/brin...
Or there’s X, the website formerly known as Twitter. Its owner is committed to removing the government, and seems keen to encourage violence on Britain’s streets. Now its 2026 update lets users create what are politely called “sexualised images” of anyone, including children. A Secretary of State for Culture, if Britain had one, could take a view on whether this was a welcome development. They could, if they had been appointed and went into work every day, offer Starmer advice on whether X should be one of the government’s main channels of communication, effectively supporting a site that produces on-demand pornography of real people including, let’s say it again, children.
January 7, 2026 at 9:49 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
It's not just the abolition of DCMS. There's a lot to be said for deregulation, but getting rid of Ofcom and the Electrical Commission was also a mistake.

thecritic.co.uk/brin...
Then there are new channels like GB News. While BBC producers sit with stopwatches ensuring that political parties all get a fair say, GB News can do what it likes, thanks to the government’s decision to shut down broadcast regulator Ofcom. That has allowed the channel to act as a daily booster for one political party. It is impossible to imagine that, had the Department of Culture and Ofcom not shut their doors in 2024, a “news” channel would have been allowed to have a political party leader as a regular host (indeed, had Labour not also abolished the Electoral Commission, it might have been interested in how a channel whose last set of accounts show it losing £33 million can afford to pay Farage more than £400,000 in less than two years).
January 7, 2026 at 9:43 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
Getting rid of DCMS meant there was no one in government able to warn the prime minister that creatives can't live off thin air. thecritic.co.uk/brin...
In practice, though, the experiment has not been a success. Take copyright. The government’s pursuit of economic growth is laudable, even if the chosen route, of piling taxes and regulation onto businesses, is eccentric. In that context, what could be more natural than to open the door of Number 10 to every Silicon Valley huckster who came knocking? Unfortunately, it turns out that writers and musicians weren’t fully persuaded that giving up all their present and future income is a good idea, even after it was explained to them that this was the only way Sam Altman would be able to afford a new lair under a volcano. Last month a consultation on the government’s proposals to give very rich Americans everything they want found they were supported by just three percent of people who wrote in. If the Department for Culture had still existed, someone there would have been able to save time by warning ministers that creative people – many of them instinctive Labour Party supporters – need m
January 7, 2026 at 9:23 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
Critic Campaign: it's time to admit that it was a mistake to abolish the Department if Culture. Keir Starmer should bring it back.

thecritic.co.uk/brin...
January 7, 2026 at 9:20 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
At once excited and terrified to find out how many parts there will be to the Spectator's interview with Dominic Cummings.
January 4, 2026 at 9:28 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
It's the only game that matters. My SKETCH of British politicians playing the Trump Game.
The first rule of the Trump Game, played by politicians around the world, is you do not talk about the rules of the Trump Game. The object of the game is to pretend that the President of the United States is a normal, rational statesman, perhaps an eccentric one, but fundamentally someone who is acting according to some strategy that the rest of us might one day hope to fathom. On no account are you ever to admit that he’s nasty, vain, venal, capricious and obviously unaware that his own doctors are testing him for signs of dementia. The 2026 round of the game got off with a literal series of bangs, as the US military attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its president. On Sunday morning we were greeted by the sight of Nicolás Maduro being led down a hall at the Drug Enforcement Administration in New York. The floor had been painted with the slogan “Rule of Law”, to allow Americans to walk all over it.
January 4, 2026 at 5:23 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
"I'm going to spend my retirement explaining to anyone who'll listen that I stopped things from being much worse, and no one will believe me or care."
January 3, 2026 at 5:20 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
New "realising I've created my own private hell" video just dropped.
January 3, 2026 at 5:16 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
January 2, 2026 at 11:53 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
It's Steve Reed, the Environment Secretary, asking a farmer who's explained the maths to him "are you sure?"

OF COURSE HE'S SURE! *He* understands his business. Why are *you*, the minister responsible, only now learning how it works?

thecritic.co.uk/reaping-a-bi...
Steve Reed gets into trouble taking to a farmer Barry Gardiner tries to help
January 2, 2026 at 8:36 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
Key question: which of these men has a podcast in 2025?
January 1, 2026 at 1:01 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
Also, in the scenario that we are offered of Badenoch leading her party into the election, a plausible objection to a coalition is likely to be the proportion of new Reform MPs who don't think she should be in the country, let alone government.
December 28, 2025 at 10:37 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
Ah yes, the now-forgotten BBC sitcom "Hitler Was Right".
December 28, 2025 at 10:32 AM
roberthutton.co.uk
When we had a kitchen fitted, we did get the counter raised by an inch, and it caused no end of problems because all the units were too short. Behold the piece of MDF I had to order when I finally realised why the dishwasher kept rocking back and forth.
December 25, 2025 at 6:10 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
As an inexperienced Lobby Correspondent with no sources inside government, one of the things I realised was that when Tom Kelly was especially grumpy about an issue, it was because there was an internal problem with it, and he knew it. His letter to The Times about why the briefings matter:
December 24, 2025 at 2:46 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
This, on the other hand, does very much sum up my coverage of major fiscal events.
December 23, 2025 at 8:13 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
Genuinely astonished how low this is. It's less than half of the book I have actually written.
December 23, 2025 at 8:12 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
Blair, in his memoirs, is quite explicit that this was the intention.
December 23, 2025 at 2:39 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
1. This is indeed a climbdown by the govt, and therefore a Tory win.
2. But anyone who suggested this wasn't an obvious Tory campaign is a moron.
3. So why are you telling us you have moron advisers?
Somehow, even in victory, Kemi manages to Badenoch.
December 23, 2025 at 1:02 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
"How can you say the Department of Culture doesn't exist, Rob? Why, Chris Bryant was a minister there for over a year!"
December 19, 2025 at 5:16 PM
roberthutton.co.uk
Christmas Prime Minister's Questions is the Prime Minister's Questions with the worst jokes. My SKETCH. thecritic.co.uk/stan...
The last Prime Minister’s Questions before Christmas was conducted in a spirit of goodwill. Not quite a truce, but certainly an easing of hostilities. Keir Starmer opened by offering every MP the compliments of the season. “And a little festive advice to those in Reform: if mysterious men from the East appear bearing gifts, this time report it to the police.” We looked over at Britain’s insurgent party, who have decided to treat barbs about the conviction of their Welsh leader for taking Russian bribes as highly amusing. Richard Tice bounced up and down in his seat like a schoolboy who’s heard the tuck shop is offering half-price gobstoppers. Where was Nigel Farage? He had decided to sit up in the gallery. He claimed on Twitter that this was a protest at the “rigged” session, but a more likely explanation is that he dislikes the taunts that come his way. Farage seems to have only two moods: triumphalism and petulance. If he does make it to Number 10, he’s going to struggle with the sl
December 17, 2025 at 6:45 PM