Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Tuesday

5 Nov 2024

Steerpike

Farage: Reform membership has surged since Badenoch win

At long last, the Tory leadership race concluded at the weekend after Kemi Badenoch was crowned victor on Saturday. But while the Conservatives finally have some semblance of stability with their newly-appointed leader and shadow cabinet, it’s not all good news for the blues. Nigel Farage has now claimed that since Badenoch’s weekend win, his party have seen a surge in membership figures. How very curious… Quizzed on LBC today about whether Reform has seen a boost in sign-ups, Farage insisted: Seeing it already. We’ve gone through 95,000 members this morning. So we’ve gone up 1,500 in the last three or four days. And these are Conservatives who are hanging

Steerpike

Gamblers are putting their money on a Trump triumph

It’s polling day across the pond and Steerpike is keen to have a flutter. Opinion polling in the US election suggests the safe money is on Kamala Harris, but his fellow gamblers seem to be telling a different story. Data analysed by Mr S’s friends in the Speccies’ data dungeon shows money is pouring in behind The Donald. Trump has a nearly two thirds chance of returning to the White House in January, according to an analysis of implied probabilities. Do the punters know something the pundits don’t? Mr S will be tracking the betting markets every five minutes and updating the graph below…

Daniel McCarthy

A ripple, not a wave, will decide the US election

What can the 2020 and 2016 elections, the previous votes in which Donald Trump was the Republican nominee, tell us about today’s race for the White House? There are three layers to a presidential election, only two of which really matter. The overall ‘popular’ vote only counts for bragging rights. Trump has never won it. The popular vote in individual states, however, is the critical second layer of the election. Trump won the 2016 election because he eked out slender popular pluralities in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona – four states that are battlegrounds this year as well – and in Florida, which since 2000 had been the biggest prize

Theo Hobson

The trouble with Guy Fawkes night

My reaction to fireworks is a bit eccentric. Lovely, I think, but can’t they be more meaningful? To be more precise, this is my view of Bonfire Night, formerly known as Guy Fawkes night. It would be nice, I think, if we could revive the annual event as a celebration of our shared values. To be fair, it retains a faint gunpowdery whiff of this. Most Britons are aware that we are celebrating a historic victory over terrorism. But the awareness is fading. Ideally, Guy Fawkes would have belonged to some obscure sect that is now safely defunct The main problem with trying to revive the meaningfulness of this festival

Daniel DePetris

Why a Trump win may not rock the boat as much as you think

If you didn’t know any better, you might think the 2024 US presidential election was a make-or-break moment for America and the world. Allies and adversaries alike will be watching the election results like the rest of us: on the edge of our seats. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are at the centre of the universe right now. So goes the result in those three states, so goes the fate of the international system as we know it. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are at the centre of the universe right now It’s all a bit dramatic. Sure, certain countries have their favourites. South Korea, for example, is petrified that a second

Gavin Mortimer

France’s drugs war is spiralling out of control

Even by the bloody standards of what France has become under Emmanuel Macron, the carnage last week was horrific. In Poitiers, a shootout left five youths seriously wounded, one of whom died of his injuries at the weekend. In Rennes, a 5-year-old remains in a serious state after being hit in the head by a stray bullet. In Valence, a 22-year-old man was shot dead and two others wounded as they queued outside a nightclub for a Halloween party on Thursday night; the following day an 18-year-old was gunned down and killed in a suburb of the same town. In Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon, a man was shot dead,

Jack Symes

The ‘joy’ of fireworks isn’t worth the misery they inflict on animals

The crowd gathers, wrapped in thick coats and scarves, the crisp air mingling with the scent of hot chocolate and warm smoke from the bonfire. Children sit on their parents’ shoulders, eyes wide with anticipation, as the first crackle in the sky is met with an appreciative cheer. As more fireworks light up the sky, the excitement begins to wane. Each pop and bang elicit fewer reactions, and the comfort of shared laughter and idle chit-chat begins to take hold. Soon enough, the fireworks become little more than a backdrop to the real joy of the evening – familiar faces and easy conversation. Sheltered in our homes, a very different

Monday

4 Nov 2024

Freddy Gray

Can Trump ‘Get Out the Vote’?

35 min listen

Freddy keeps up Americano tradition by speaking to Daniel McCarthy ahead of the election. On the podcast they discuss how Trump’s get-out-the-vote project is working and the impact low-propensity voters could have on the result, whether this election will be plagued by inefficiencies in the American electoral system and if J.D. Vance is actually the heir apparent to the MAGA title.

Isabel Hardman

Laura Trott’s Commons debut gives a clue to Kemi’s tactics

What difference has Kemi Badenoch’s victory made to the way the party talks about education? Badenoch doesn’t want to make policy straight away, having stood on a platform promising a fundamental rethink of what the Conservatives stand for. Today’s Education Questions in the Commons suggested that in the meantime, she wants her frontbenchers to put their efforts into defending the party’s legacy. Laura Trott had been appointed to the shadow education secretary brief just hours before the question session, along with Neil O’Brien in the shadow minister of state role. Her first contribution was to ask about early years funding and whether it would increase in line with the hike

Andrew Tettenborn

Raising university tuition fees will only delay the inevitable

Universities in the UK desperately needed Bridget Phillipson’s announcement this afternoon of a rise in tuition fees. The Education Secretary has said they will rise from £9,250, to £9,535 next year and £10,500 by 2029. This was necessary if only to offset the effect of last week’s Budget announcement of a 1.2 per cent rise in employers’ NI and the reduction in the threshold at which it becomes payable; that alone will saddle them with extra costs of just under £400 million a year. What is unsustainable is the number of students the state chooses to support All this aside, the institutions are already in deep trouble. Fees for domestic

Kate Andrews

Is the last minute momentum really with Kamala Harris?

36 min listen

As the 2024 US election goes into the final day, a poll giving Kamala Harris a lead in the historically Republican state of Iowa has bolstered the Democrats. Is momentum really with her? And what appears to be the most important issue to voters – the economy, or abortion rights? Guest host Kate Andrews speaks to John Rick MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine, about his views on America’s election process from postal voting, trust in the system, and whether the electoral college needs reform. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Michael Simmons

Could ADHD bankrupt English councils?

Every time a chancellor sits down after delivering their budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) releases their ‘economic and fiscal outlook’. What seems a boringly-named Whitehall document is actually a treasure trove of information about the state of the country. It reveals more about how we live our lives – and what lies ahead, than perhaps any other document apart from the decennial census. Buried within its pages are harbingers of the problems future governments will face. Page 129 of the nearly 200-page document carries one such alarming warning: a huge surge in the amount local authorities are likely to have to provide to fund children with special educational

Katy Balls and James Heale

Team Badenoch: A guide to the new shadow cabinet

The result is in. Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the Conservative party. She faces a daunting task trying to transform the party, following its worst ever defeat earlier this year. The new Tory leader won with 56.5 per cent of the vote with her rival Robert Jenrick on 43.5 per cent. So, who will be the key players in ‘Team Badenoch’? She faces an uphill task on funding, campaigns, staffing and party management. In the aftermath of July’s election defeat, and a drop-off in party donations, Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) has been forced to cut back on staff numbers. Meanwhile, there aren’t that many Conservative MPs to choose

Steerpike

Scots revealed to be biggest Trump fans in western Europe

In a rather surprising development, it transpires that Scottish people are Donald Trump’s biggest fans in Europe. A Norstat poll for the Times has revealed that support for the US presidential candidate is higher north of the border than in the rest of the UK – and indeed western Europe. Who’d have thought it, eh? According to the survey, a quarter of Scottish adults back the former president for the win this week – while, of the rest of the country, just 16 per cent would throw their weight behind the ex-businessman. Italy is closest behind the Scots in terms of Trump hype, with 24 per cent of Italians hoping

Rod Liddle

Why does ITV hate Trump?

It would be consoling to think that the BBC, alone among our supposedly unpartisan TV news providers, is guilty of hopelessly biased coverage of the US presidential election. This would conform to the increasingly popular notion that Auntie is in a place beyond redemption, unique in its iniquities. That notion may be true, but it is not true of its US election coverage. All of the news providers have been biased and the BBC is probably one of the least egregious of offenders. It would seem to me that all the broadcasters broadly concur that a second Trump presidency would be a disaster for the US, for democracy and for

James Kirkup

Should GPs make a profit?

The Budget has started a fight between the government and GPs. As is often the case with doctors, that fight is about money, but there is also something even more valuable at stake: the proper public understanding of general practice and the NHS. When I ran a thinktank, I kept a list of things I wished the public understood about government and public policy. Top of the list was: ‘No, your state pension isn’t funded by your own National Insurance payments – it’s funded from the taxes of today’s workers.’ Health got lots of entries on the list too: Thanks to Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, that

Steerpike

Labour’s tuition fee U-turn

Dear oh dear. It now transpires that Starmer’s army will increase university fees in line with inflation from September next year, as announced by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson in the Commons today. It’s the first hike to tuition fees in eight years after university payments have remained frozen at £9,250 a year since 2017 – and accompanies growing concern about the financial state of the country’s higher education institutions. The move, which Phillipson says is the ‘first step’ to reform of the sector, comes after Russell Group universities complained that the tuition fee cap means that they make a £4,000 loss per UK student – and will be accompanied by

Oscar Edmondson

Who will make up Kemi’s shadow cabinet?

12 min listen

Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the opposition, and we have an early indication of who will make up her shadow cabinet. She has already chosen her chief whip in loyalist Rebecca Harris; Nigel Huddleston and Dominic Johnson will be party chairman; Laura Trott will be shadow education secretary; Neil O’Brien will be shadow minister for education – crucially, a Jenrick backer. Is she going for party unity? Who will take the top jobs in team Badenoch? Also on the podcast, it’s anything-but-the-budget-week for Labour, who are trying to move the agenda along from last week’s fiscal event with a raft of announcements. Today, the prime minister unveiled his

Leon Mangasarian

How Germany became the sick man of Europe

Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser – trust is good, control is better – is a popular German saying. It’s also the state’s motto for overseeing Europe’s biggest economy, which is now being run into the ground. Germany’s economy is officially expected to shrink in 2024 for the second year in a row. Berlin’s Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Greens Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, who are fighting for their political lives as their coalition crumbles around them, are to blame. Only one German sector is growing: the state. Government consumption grew by 2.8 per cent from mid-2023 to mid-2024. Dealing with bureaucracy costs German business €67 billion (£55 billion)

Geoff Hill

A fragile democracy has bloomed in Botswana

There’s been a momentous election in Africa, Botswana to be exact. Not heard about it? Don’t be surprised. The British and US media have all but ignored the story or got it wrong in the run-up. Even the BBC barely mentioned it though they bang on about Israel to such a degree you’d think the war was in Guernsey instead of Gaza. On 30 October, Botswana held a general election as they have every five years since independence from Britain in 1966. Of all the countries in Africa, it’s the only one that’s never had a coup or a period of autocratic rule. But since 1966, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP)