Politics

James Forsyth discusses the by-election results with Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman: Labour has avoided total electoral disaster and held the Stoke Central seat with a relatively comfortable majority of 2,620. The Labour vote share in the seat was only marginally down on the 2015 general election, which while not good for an opposition party does suggests that Brexit hasn’t taken as big a chunk out of Labour’s support in Leave voting seats as some are suggesting. Labour are trying to argue that their victory here marks a turning point in their attempt to see off the Ukip threat to them in Brexit voting seats in the Midlands and the

The so-called leader of the so-called opposition gave another so-called performance today. Jeremy Corbyn seems to have challenged the Labour party to a slalom race. Target: rock bottom. Go Corbo! his enemies cheer as they watch his hapless figure slithering and shimmying down the ice-floes of public contempt. Today he came to the Commons with grounds for hope. Which, for Corbo, means a bulletin of despair issued by a public body with a fancy title and some embossed note-paper. The Marie Curie Foundation worries that nurses are struggling to care for dying patients. And the British Medical Association complains that 15,000 beds have been trundled out of NHS wards and

It is almost always unwise to postpone the introduction of a big, scheduled tax change, but often tempting at the time. George Osborne, when Chancellor of the Exchequer in the coalition government, postponed the revaluation of business rates, when it was due two years ago, for obvious political reasons. So now it is happening, and it hurts worse than it would have then. The current rates are based on the rental value of business properties in 2010. Since then, the scene is transformed. The internet has called the whole concept of the ordinary, physical shop into question. Values have vastly altered and the political problem – as with the poll tax