All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Rishi Sunak’s unequivocal statement this week about sex and the Equality Act was a clever piece of electioneering. Subsequent reports suggesting that the Tories planned to harden their stance on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), by contrast, had the air of a measure taken in sheer panic. Regrettably, this will be obvious to
How should Rishi Sunak respond to the unwelcome insertion of Nigel Farage into the election campaign? The Prime Minister called the election for 4 July in part because he hoped it would wrong-foot Reform, but that hasn’t worked, with Farage electrifying the challenger party and near-electrocuting many Tory MPs who were already terrified of losing
Farage-mania has come to Clacton-on-Sea this lunchtime. Hundreds of locals gathered around the Essex seaside town’s pier to hear Nigel Farage speak after his shock announcement that he would stand for election after all. The Reform leader was introduced by Richard Tice – the former leader, who stepped aside on Monday to make way for
Back to the blundering BBC, whose latest mishap involves one of the broadcaster’s cricket pundits. Qasim Sheikh, formerly a Scotland international cricketer and a new addition to the Beeb’s sports commentator team, has been accused of antisemitism after sharing some rather controversial social media posts — including an image of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with
The last time Nigel Farage stood for parliament was in 2015. He wasn’t elected, and it was his seventh failure to win a seat, as his many enemies love to point out. What has inspired Farage, the new leader of the Reform party, to have an eighth shot? The state of the domestic opposition, perhaps,
Another day, another Conservative campaign gaffe. This time it involves Education Secretary Gillian Keegan who has enthusiastically thrown her support behind the Tory candidate for Winchester, Flick Drummond. And so excited was Keegan about Drummond’s prospects she turned up to the launch event, um, several hours early. Talk about getting ahead of yourself… Drummond’s launch
It is perhaps no accident that Rishi Sunak has rushed out his proposal for a cap on migrant workers and their dependants the day after Nigel Farage announced that he was taking over as leader of Reform UK. But you wonder how many votes there really are in a migration cap when Farage is already
Kemi Badenoch has announced that sex is biological – yes, and rain is wet, and the election is soon. So what? Are we seriously expected to celebrate this statement of obvious fact? A woman is an adult human female. She is not a piece of paper, she’s not an idea in a man’s head and
What comes next? That is what many Tories are asking as they stare down the barrel of defeat. Even before Nigel Farage’s re-entry into the election campaign, most had privately conceded that the election was lost. An MRP/YouGov poll out yesterday suggested that the Tories are on course to win just 140 seats – the
From the moment the Conservatives called this summer election they seemed doomed: Sunak had failed to deliver on his five promises, much of the electorate had given up on him, and Starmer looked set for power. But there still seemed like the possibility of a hung parliament, or perhaps Labour only getting a small majority,
It’s always handy for parents to have someone they can use to put their children off any particular profession. ‘Don’t be a comedian, son – you’ll end up like that Eddie Izzard!’ ‘Don’t be a journalist, my girl – you’ll end up like that Julie Burchill!’ Quite a few politicians have vied for this inverted ‘top spot’
The opinion polls might be projecting a massive Labour majority, but there is a dynamic to this election that could yet derail Keir Starmer’s plans for government. Yesterday, J.K. Rowling spoke for many women when she fired off a volley of tweets on sex and gender. Her frustration was palpable, but also notable was her defence of
Towards the end of last year, Nigel Farage set tongues wagging as he entered the jungle for I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Yesterday he announced his return to electoral politics – and the national conversation about him now is curiously similar to what it was then. Will the masses actually vote for him? Will
When Alex Salmond was leader of the SNP he used to complain bitterly to the broadcasters that it was unfair to stage TV debates with three unionist party leaders – Labour, Conservatives and the Lib Dems – against the one nationalist. In last night’s Scottish leaders debate though, the unionist imbalance hardly figured. That is
A quirk of the UK system is that the requirement to tell the truth in adverts does not apply to politicians. This is, in effect, a license to lie – or, at least, to stretch the truth until the elastic snaps. The Conservatives have given some examples in their first campaign video an indication. It
Thirty-five years ago today, China’s leaders ordered tanks into Tiananmen Square to disperse a student encampment. The death toll was never made public; it is likely that several thousand people were killed. June 4, 1989 planted the seeds of a much darker, more complicated world than we in the West cared to fathom The brutal
Unlike Brenda from Bristol, I usually love elections – but not this one. Theresa May’s self-destruction in 2017 was one of the most fascinating events I’ve ever seen. The high-stakes tension of Boris vs. Corbyn in 2019 had me gripped to the TV. Even as a child, I couldn’t get enough of the high drama
There is a truism in British politics that things would be much more civil if there were more women in the room. Tonight’s all-male Scottish leaders’ debate undermined that: the exchanges were far less vehement and aggressive than they had been when Nicola Sturgeon was SNP leader and when she was facing other female leaders.
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This afternoon a wildcard was thrown into the election – the return of Nigel Farage. He will be standing for the Reform party at Clacton, the one parliamentary seat that Ukip had held. What will this mean for the Conservatives? James Heale talks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy
The one thing that had gone right for Rishi Sunak in the election campaign to date has now gone wrong. Nigel Farage has been so energised by the first ten days of the election that he has taken back the leadership of the Reform party and decided to stand for parliament in Clacton after all.
Oh dear. It’s been another bad day for the Tories. Shortly after Nigel Farage announced his return as leader of Reform, the first YouGov MRP poll of 50,000 voters dropped, showing Sunak’s party down to just 140 seats. But for one Conservative, things were about to get even worse. As Sky’s Sam Coates discussed the
It never rains but it pours for Rishi Sunak. Less than an hour after Nigel Farage performed a shock U-turn, announcing he will not only stand for election but take over the leadership of the Reform party, YouGov has released its first MRP poll of the election campaign. It does not make pretty reading for
Joe Biden’s introduction of the three-stage deal to end the war in Gaza was a clever rout to bypass Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden has lost confidence in Netanyahu’s readiness to present things to the Israeli public, and to his own cabinet, in an honest and truthful way. By presenting the terms of the deal clearly and
He’s back. After all the teasing and all the rhetoric, Nigel Farage has finally announced his return as Reform leader. Having initially pledged that he would not stand at this election, he told a 100-strong room in Westminster: ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ He will now stand as Reform’s candidate in Clacton – the only seat Ukip
No wonder that Nigel Farage has decided that he would rather be leader of Reform UK than merely honorary president, and that he would like another shot at standing as an MP in Clacton. He looks as if he is the only politician – with the possible exception of Ed Davey – who is actually
George Galloway would be happy if his Workers’ Party of Britain denied Labour the chance of an outright majority at the election because it would mean that whoever was in power would have to listen to the smaller parties. That was his message today when interviewed by Andrew Neil on Times Radio: the former Labour
Can anything go right on Rishi Sunak’s magical mystery tour? Nothing seems to be going right for the Prime Minister as he campaigns around the country, seeking to overturn Labour’s 20-point lead in the polls. Whether it’s attendees rolling their eyes on camera or an ill-advised trip to Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, the PM often seems
Today we are witnessing a significant failure of the UK state. This morning, the personal finance campaigner Martin Lewis reported that around 30 per cent of families had not received their latest child benefit payment. HMRC, which administers the payments, said it was ‘working to resolve the issue’ and advising claimants to ‘continue to check
Nigel Farage continues to tease Westminster with his endless ‘will he, won’t he?’ dance. The former Ukip leader is hosting an ‘emergency press conference’ at 4pm amid speculation that he will announce he is standing as a candidate for Reform. It’s been a rollercoaster fortnight for Farage. His initial response to the election was to rule himself
Still haunted by the memory of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Keir Starmer has devoted today to reassuring the electorate that he is committed to maintaining nuclear weapons. The Labour leader is determined not to be seen as unreliable on defence and national security, so has announced that HIS government will introduce a ‘triple lock’ on the nuclear deterrent. A ‘triple
Labour is out this morning insisting they can be trusted with national security – honest! Keir Starmer’s latest wheeze is a ‘nuclear deterrent triple lock’ aimed at giving a ‘total commitment to securing the UK’s future nuclear deterrent.’ Such a ground-breaking policy includes such prior commitments as, er, upgrading the current fleet, maintaining a continuous
The SNP will soon have more election campaign launch events than predicted Westminster seats if it continues at the rate it is going. The party’s latest launch — the third this year — was held in the luxury Radisson Blu hotel in Glasgow on Sunday afternoon, where party activists and political candidates gathered to hear
Elections aren’t just fights between the parties over policy. They also include conspiracies of silence where neither side will benefit from talking that much about an issue. Social care is one of those toxic problems: it is a key driver of inefficiency in the NHS, and should have been reformed three decades ago. It is
It is five years since Labour’s then equalities spokeswoman, Dawn Butler, told a BBC interviewer that babies aren’t born with a sex. It was the high point of transgender ideology, which captivated all the politician parties to some extent in the 2010s. Even the Tory minister, Penny Mordaunt, told MPs in 2018 that ‘trans women are women trans men are men’