Politics

During the 2015 general election campaign, when I was directing operations at the London HQ for Ukip, I had an ‘absolutely brilliant’ idea. The next day Nigel Farage would be campaigning on the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, where he was standing for election. On our grid, it was earmarked to be Small Business Day – designed to showcase the party’s manifesto focus on the self-employed and SMEs, aka ‘the backbone of the British economy’. My plan? During his campaigning, Nigel should visit a butcher, a baker and a candlestick-maker (as mentioned in the nursery rhyme ‘Rub-A-Dub-Dub’). A suitable butcher’s shop and a bakery near to his route were swiftly

Nigel Farage has decided to soft reboot the Brexit party. This ‘new’ party will be anti-lockdown, anti-quango, anti-House of Lords, with a lot of talk about illegal immigration along the way. Particularly in an age where populism appears to be on the wane, the Reform party will only appeal to a niche audience. Will it get more than eight per cent in the polls? It’s hard to see how. The party will struggle to manage to scale the boundaries the voting system pits against small parties and win a seat in the House Commons. Even at local level, they won’t do all that well. But as Ukip did, Reform might just change everything

As the Tory rebellion over the government’s lockdown plan grows, Nigel Farage has entered the fray. The former Ukip leader is to relaunch the Brexit Party as a new force in the coronavirus debate. The outfit will be renamed Reform UK and promises to provide a counter-voice to the two main parties’ support for lockdown as a way of tackling coronavirus. Farage’s party will instead argue for a policy of ‘focused protection’ from coronavirus for the vulnerable.  The news of Farage’s plans has been met with surprise — and even laughter — in some quarters. Several Tory MPs have been quick to dismiss it as Farage needing a hobby on the basis that his

Michael Gove – New lockdown ‘could be extended’ Yesterday Boris Johnson announced that England would be entering another lockdown as of this Thursday, which will last for, at the very least, the entirety of November. Sophy Ridge’s first guest of the day was the Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove, who told her that the envisioned end-date of Wednesday 2nd December was subject to change if the rates of Covid infection could not be reduced: SR: If the data on the whole is not looking as you are hoping, then the national lockdown could be extended? MG: We will always take a decision in the national interest, based on evidence… SR:

Britain’s first lockdown hammered our kids. Being away from school for months widened the educational gap between rich and poor and harmed the prospects and wellbeing of children from low-income homes. Knowing that, what do you call people who want to close schools again? Here’s the punchline, although it’s not funny: teachers. Or more accurately, teachers’ unions. You might have missed this on a grim Saturday afternoon, but even before Boris Johnson had confirmed Lockdown 2, the National Education Union was calling for schools to be included. That would mean another month (at least) away from school for millions of kids, followed by reduced schooling. ‘The Government should include all

Dealing with a pandemic requires a clear aim, planning, intelligence and supreme flexibility to react to the unknown. However, ever since reports broke in the West of a newly-identified virus in Wuhan in January, this has not been the case in Britain. The result? We have suffered a very high death toll, and substantial social and economic damage has been inflicted on our society. It did not need to be this way. Our Covid-19 outcome could have been very different if certain mistakes were not made. Here we list some of the major decision-making blunders made over the last eight months. 1. Lack of a clear aim In March, Health