Welcome to the FTs political fix with me Miranda Green. We're approaching the first birthday of

Kirstama's government and already the Prime Minister has had to cave in to threats of a damaging

defeat at the hands of his own party. Scores of Labour MPs signed an amendment that would

have killed the welfare bill set to go to a vote in the Commons next week.

When we recorded this podcast on Thursday evening, Downing Street still seemed determined to press

on, but Stama has since U-turned, granting concessions in the hope of appeasing the rebels.

Will it be enough? Whatever the compromise, that enormous landslide win 12 months ago

feels as if it's fading by the day. My colleague Stephen Bush and Jim Picard joined me to discuss

how Downing Street got here and what the welfare uprising tells us. But first, true to form,

the Prime Minister spent some of the week abroad at the NATO summit. I grabbed FT

chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rackman to ask him if never hear Keir, as the opposition

calls him, is fearing better on the international stage than he is on the domestic one. Hi, Gideon.

Hi.

So, Gideon, thanks for joining us from Helsinki. You've been speaking to so many people over the past

few days about Israel strikes on Iran and the US Action 2. How could the UK be impacted by this new

dimension to global uncertainty? Look, it's too soon to say. I mean, I think that they'll be

relieved that for the moment, it looks like

we're not looking to wider war in the Middle East. Trump's ceasefire was a bit wobbly at first,

but if it holds, and then that's obviously good. Bad scenarios would include this just being

a lull in the fighting, discovering that the Iranian nuclear stuff had not been fully

disposed of, and then a resumption of fighting which will be very disruptive economically and

have all sorts of strategic dangers for Europe and could drag Britain in the margins.

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