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When was the first televised election debate?
TV clashes
The concept of a televised election debate is often believed to have begun with the one held between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon before the 1960 US presidential election – an innovation not repeated until 1976. (The first televised election debate in the UK didn’t take place until the 2010 general election.) Yet its history can really be traced back to 4 November 1956 when, days before Americans were invited to choose between President Eisenhower and Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson II, the CBS News show Face the Nation held a half-hour debate between Eleanor Roosevelt, representing the Democrats, and Margaret Chase Smith, representing the Republicans. Remarkably, it was the first time that the show, which by then had been running for two years, had featured any female interviewees, let alone two. The smiling and behatted Roosevelt dominated the talking over the more subdued Chase Smith, but she did not prevent President Eisenhower winning a second term.
Unsafe seats
An Electoral Calculus poll predicted that the Conservative party could be reduced to just 66 seats in the House of Commons at the next general election. In which elections, post 1945, has the official opposition won the fewest seats?
Conservatives 1997 165
Conservatives 2001 166
Conservatives 2005 198
Labour 2019 202
Labour 1983 209
Labour 1987 229
Labour 2015 232
Gender agenda
The 2021 census asked us: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’ 118,000, or 0.5% of the population, answered ‘no’, although many non-native English speakers are believed to have misunderstood the question – not least because one of the areas with officially the largest transgender population in Boston, Lincolnshire, home to many Eastern European migrants. Of those who answered ‘no’:
– 48,000 (0.1%) said they were born female but are now male.
– 48,000 (0.1%) said they were born male but are now female.
– 30,000 (0.06%) said they were non-binary.
– 18,000 (0.04%) wrote in some other gender identity.
Source: Office for National Statistics
Another election boost for Trump
Last Thursday evening a companionable London dinner party was just wrapping up when our hostess returned to the table brandishing the New York Times headline on her phone: in giant letters for such a tiny device, ‘TRUMP GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS’. Three American Democrats and one British Democrat-by-marriage, my fellow diners were exhilarated. One guest declared, ‘We got him’ – soon a triumphant refrain in my home state of New York.
Democrats are so blinded by their own goodness that they fail to grasp how badly this strategy could backfire
Technically a Democrat, sometimes as a sly rhetorical convenience, I was more muted, mumbling quietly once the cheers died down: ‘But I’m not sure about how this will play out politically.’ Fortunately, my reservations were ignored. My intense dislike of Donald Trump constitutes the narrow strip of common ground that I share with my many progressive friends, and it was imprudent to cast doubt on my one political saving grace. The evening was late for a knockdown drag-out over the merits of Trump’s ‘hush-money trial’, and naysaying would have pooped the party’s buoyant mood.
Emotionally, I’m still sympathetic. On the face of it, the verdict seems a win for the self-perceived good guys, so obviously that company was festive. I appreciate the ferocity with which many Americans (not all of them Democrats) revile Trump and genuinely believe he represents an existential threat to our system of government. Yet the problem with deeming any matter ‘existential’ is that, implicitly, all the rules are therefore out the window. When your very survival is at stake, you can’t afford the niceties of due process, and savvy Darwinians fight tooth and claw. To survive, you will do anything – which justifies the Democrats’ no-holds-barred political-seemliness-be-damned behaviour of the past eight years.
The ‘hush money’ case is bound to be mis-perceived by many Americans who’ve been paying scant attention – that is, who have a life – as Trump being nailed for paying a porn star to keep her mouth shut about their seedy liaison (wasted money, as it turns out). We losers who squander our precious lives on newspapers understand that nondisclosure agreements are legal, and the case entailed the un-titillating falsification of business records.
The trial has already been parsed in the press, and I haven’t space for all the elements that made it a legal farce. Besides, I can hardly do better than two headlines in the satirical website Babylon Bee: ‘Kangaroos ask people to stop unfairly comparing them to US Justice system’ and ‘Twelve jurors unanimously vote to ensure Trump re-election’. Perhaps even better, a commenter on Matt Taibbi’s Substack suggested a new Trump campaign slogan: ‘Trump 2024: At Least He Was Competent to Stand Trial.’
Still, a few notes. I submit with no exaggeration that Donald J. Trump is the sole American citizen among a population of 335 million against whom these particular charges would have been brought. If this case were a three-piece suit, it would have been so meticulously tailored to Trump’s exact dimensions that he’d be the only guy in the country who could fit into it (‘if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit!’). The DA ran for office on the promise that he would get Trump, but never mentioned for what. He had the defendant; finding the crime required a shopping expedition. Have person, then find outfit works at M&S. But in law? Wrong order.
Progressive media have gleefully bannered that the former president has now been convicted of ‘34 felonies’. But all those counts regard a single deal to secure the porn star’s discretion. Trump personally signed nine cheques, and each cheque counted as a separate offence. Imagine that I offered you $1 to go steal a Mars bar for me (which actually would be a crime) but once arrested I’m charged with 100 crimes, because I paid you in pennies.
As all news nerds now know, this case could only defy the statute of limitations by elevating misdemeanours to felonies; thus dodgy bookkeeping had to further another crime. We still don’t know what that other crime was. The jury was given a multiple choice. While all 12 had to find him guilty, they needn’t have agreed on guilty of what – exceeding campaign donation limits, election interference, tax irregularity? Trump sincerely has no idea what he’s being sentenced for in July. Picture going to jail and being hazy on whether you’re being locked up for attempted murder, breaking and entering or an unpaid parking fine.
The prosecution argued that by disguising a squalid story of extramarital sex from the electorate, who might otherwise have been put off, Trump ‘defrauded’ the public in a presidential election. That reasoning would sabotage virtually any candidate for federal office. We can sensibly infer that candidates are obliged to rattle every skeleton in their closets. Thus ‘Vote X! He cheated on a third-grade arithmetic test!’ must be silk-screened on promotional T-shirts.
The principle of Occam’s Razor allows that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. We have four criminal cases – all pursued in an election year against a presidential candidate who’s leading in the polls. From the smallest step back, this appears to be political defenestration through the courts. Many Democrats believe passionately in Trump’s guilt in each instance and yearn to see their lawless nemesis behind bars. Nevertheless, if it looks like a duck…
Democrats are so blinded by their own goodness that they fail to grasp how badly this lawfare strategy could backfire. Many Americans are disillusioned with their country’s institutions, including the justice system. Democrats counting on the fatal opprobrium that ought to attach to a candidate who’s ‘a convicted felon’ are living in the Dragnet world of the 1950s.
Comments such as this one on Taibbi’s Substack are all over the internet: ‘I loathe Trump and I have volunteered for RFK Jr, but last night I considered voting for Donald for the first time. Hell, even my super lib wife wants to vote for him solely because she hates the Dems more than she hates Trump now.’
Democrats have a serious ends-means problem. But you cannot save democracy by destroying it. Think: nose, spite, face.
What war graves teach us about peace
Hugh Jones was 29 when he was killed in action. On Wednesday, the eve of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, his grave at Bayeux – and those of 22,000 Commonwealth war dead in cemeteries across Normandy – was illuminated in a vigil to these silent witnesses to the pity of war.
All Commonwealth war cemeteries share a powerful aesthetic. There are more than 2,000 across 134 countries, and in each, lines of soldiers’ graves evoke a battalion on parade. In life, officers and soldiers may have been divided by religion, rank or class but they are unseparated in death. They sit, Kipling wrote, on ‘fair and level ground… Where high and low are one’.
It is difficult to imagine today how revolutionary these cemeteries were when they were built. In previous centuries, our war dead were buried with little ceremony where they fell. But by the early 20th century, funerals had become affordable, so Britons demanded more. As casualties mounted in the Great War, the military historian John Keegan wrote, it was ‘unthinkable that the dead of a national army, dying in their tens of thousands for King, Country and Empire, should be left in hurried graves, marked by some makeshift cross nailed together by comrades’.
How to inter this vast army of the dead? Before the first cemeteries were built in 1920, at Le Treport, Forceville and Louvencourt, four principles were agreed by what was then called the Imperial War Graves Commission: no private memorials, to prevent the wealthy funding more ornate graves; officers and soldiers buried together; no repatriation of remains back home; and every soldier honoured individually. The lack of repatriation and the absence of Christian crosses on graves were particularly controversial, but the cemeteries fast became places of post-war pilgrimage and public concerns faded.
Deciding their design was a difficult task, at times fraught. Edwin Lutyens, one of the four principal architects, wanted a plain ‘war stone’, a kind of altar, at every cemetery. Herbert Baker, one of Lutyens’s oldest friends, preferred a cross, and thought it looked better against the backdrop of the French countryside. At a point, Charles Aitken, a third architect, doubted the project, and thought the budget for the cemeteries should be used for social housing or a university. Baker and Lutyens argued frequently, and Baker wrote in his memoirs that the years he spent designing the war graves became ‘the unhappiest in all my life’s work’.
Still, once the cemeteries were built, that didn’t matter much. After both world wars, bereaved relatives were able to pay for a gravestone inscription of up to 60 characters. In Bayeux, some epitaphs are religious (‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’); others patriotic (‘His duty nobly done, he died that we might live’). Some are personal (‘In ever loving memory of our dear son and brother’, ‘God Bless our soldier daddy’, ‘My Only Child, he gave his all. Till We Meet Again – Mother’). Some have no inscription.
The mother and widow of Hugh Jones could afford an epitaph for their son and husband. Hugh’s father had been killed at Passchendaele in 1917 and is remembered there. The Jones family knew the grief of war. ‘Not just today but every day in silence I remember,’ Hugh’s grave reads. Our war cemeteries are our greatest preachers of peace.
Why am I so unlucky in love?
Petronella Wyatt has narrated this article for you to listen to.
One of my exes is trying to get me arrested. I discovered this when I received an email from the Met Police saying that he had accused me of stealing his belongings. As he is not a British citizen, the nice policeman I spoke to said I need do nothing in response. I was puzzled, until I remembered that after we had parted ways my ex had said: ‘I’d like to see you behind bars.’ I hadn’t realised he had meant it literally. The bastard.
When we parted ways, my ex had said: ‘I’d like to see you behind bars.’ I hadn’t realised he meant literally
I wondered what I had seen in him, apart from his looking like a lovesick Satan. I have consistently willed myself to accommodate men whose teeth I should have knocked out. There was my former beau Henry (not his real name, of course). Henry was not an intoxicating mental cinema but had a certain androgynous allure and a house in Dorset shrouded in sea mists. He was obsessed with anything to do with war and employed an ex-serviceman as a cook. The man was an ill-tempered halfwit, who ignored my tentative menu suggestions, saying: ‘Would Moddam like me to prepare a roast swan?’ Moddam, whose mouth used to distend with fear in his presence, would have liked that very much compared with what he did prepare.
On one occasion, guests were presented with red-and-white spheres resembling suppurating boils. ‘Is this parrot?’ asked Dougie Hayward, the 1960s couturier who swung with Terence Stamp and Richard Burton. Then there was Henry’s fetish for military uniforms. He had a cellar full of dummies clad in the damn things. After he commissioned a Hussar uniform for my Christmas present, I discharged myself from further service. He retaliated by claiming that on Christmas Day my mother had pocketed the gold sovereigns from the plum pudding.
I go for the tempestuous, ornery ones, like a zealot who has discovered an arcane cult. As a result, I often fall out with my exes or their new inamoratas. When Boris took up with Carrie, I found my phone numbers blocked. Perhaps I shouldn’t have suggested to him that she fix her teeth. Still, there is nothing like a failed love affair to bring on Byronic unhappiness and the feeling that ‘There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away’.
I’m unlucky at love. It may be my excessive desire for approbation that is to blame. As my late pal Lauren Bacall said: ‘I’m hard to get. All you have to do is ask me.’ The ancients took a more sensible approach. The Greeks regarded moderation in all things as an essential virtue. Under the influence of Romanticism, this view was abandoned and overmastering desires were admired, even if they were destructive. In life there must be balance between different passions, and no one of them must be carried so far as to make the others impossible. Fat people, for instance, sacrifice all pleasures to that of eating and in doing so diminish the total happiness of their lives, as well as taxpayers’ money when they waddle to A&E.
Other passions can be taken to excess. The Empress Joséphine was a terrible frock addict. When Napoleon refused to stump up, she went to the war minister and demanded that he pay for her clothes out of funds provided for military campaigns. Since he knew that she had the power to get him dismissed he did so, and the French lost Genoa in consequence.
My misfortune in love is less costly, but seems to run in the family. I had a Hungarian grandmother who, in the 1930s, fell for a Catholic priest. The wretched man killed himself after breaking his vows. She then turned her attention to a fascist who, after the war, fled to Rio with her jewels. One of my great aunts reacted so badly to her triste little affairs that each time one ended she threw herself into the Danube. This happened so often that the chief of the Budapest police ordered his officers to stop pulling her out.
I found my phone numbers blocked. Perhaps I shouldn’t have suggested to Boris that Carrie fix her teeth
Her travails were a shame, as stable affection can promote great happiness, while a general self-confidence towards life comes from being accustomed to receiving the right sort of love. Consequently, I sometimes feel for Prince Harry, who instead of marrying a steadfast Brit, shackled himself to the deranged one-trick phoney from the States. I never quite realised how awful Meghan was until I heard an intriguing piece of gossip. According to a courtier friend of mine, before the late Queen died, she described the Duchess of Sussex as ‘a bad woman’. As I always say, there is stupid and then there is Harry stupid.
As for me, perhaps I’m a late developer when it comes to that funny thing called love. My other great aunt was 75 when she first married. Not one to penetrate the imposture of mere good looks, she chose as her mate a 45-year-old carpenter who resembled Montgomery Clift. I suspect that he married her for her furniture, but there’s hope for me yet.
No one knows how to sell the European project to the Irish any more
A few days after having Sunday lunch at the hotel where Michael Collins ate his last meal, we found ourselves on the road to Beal na Bla.
We had gone to get hay and the hayman was out to lunch, so we followed the heritage signs to the site of the ambush where Collins was shot dead.
The events of 22 August 1922 immortalised this picturesque valley in West Cork near to where the builder boyfriend and I have bought an old country house. Beal na Bla, or Blath, translates as ‘entrance to the good land’.
The memorial by the curve in the road where Collins was murdered is surrounded by lush pastureland.
We pulled the pick-up truck into a layby and walked along a newly made walkway installed for the 100-year anniversary so that Leo Varadkar could have some razzmatazz when he visited with the TV cameras.
Sadly, it means that the actual spot where Collins fell, still shooting his gun as he died from a head wound, is now impossible to see unless you know where to look for it.
Beneath the modernistic grey granite walkway walls, very Strasbourg, there is a small crumbling white marker stone on the grass verge. We caught sight of it quite by accident as we pulled away in the truck. Too late, we had passed and could not stop on the busy road. How sad that the real tribute to Collins goes unnoticed, hidden by a pretentious new structure installed for speech-making about what the untimely death of Ireland’s most beloved revolutionary meant for independence, and a united Ireland.
What would Collins make of the current leaders of Ireland? Not much, I don’t think, if you consider that the mainstream parties have been only too happy to sign away their freedoms to the European Union.
The elections currently being held here are a strange affair, not least because the issue of open borders has become so confused. No one seems to know how to sell the European project to the Irish any more.
Most of the farmers are losing their subsidies. If they want them at the same rate, they will need to acquire more land, because payments have been switched from per head of cattle to per acre.
This favours the larger producers. The small family farms can’t just spend hundreds of thousands of euros acquiring more land. They are having to either rent their farms to bigger producers or get out of farming.
The wife of the farmer next door came into our yard for a chat the other day. He has a brain tumour so she’s been doing the cattle herself. She’s a tough lady but she intimated that the game was up.
The front page of the local paper states one in four farmers here are getting out of it.
The other problem is that while cutting back these subsidies, the EU is calling in the debt they so obviously feel they represent.
Ireland has been told that it must take its fair share of immigration, more than 100,000 Ukrainians to date, around 4,000 a month ongoing.
And while the Irish love an underdog, particularly if it’s a rogue state, they only liked the idea of housing 2 per cent of Ukrainian migrants when it was a novelty.
When we moved here last year, it was a matter of pride in this small village that it was hosting 46 men who apparently didn’t want to stay and fight for Volodymyr Zelensky.
Now, if you mention the guests at the inn, people pull a face and say it’s not fair. Two complaints: there’s no housing for Irish people, and why should the Irish send troops to Ukraine when the Ukrainian fighting-age men are here?
‘We’re not having the ones from England either, did you see?’ said a neighbour of ours the other day, a formidable pensioner in her seventies who takes us out for Sunday lunch every week. Sometimes we go to the carvery up the road, other times the Eldon Hotel in Skibbereen, where we sit beneath black-and-white pictures of boyish, good-looking Collins climbing into that open-top car bound for Beal na Bla.
She was referring to the campsites in Dublin where immigrants are sleeping rough, having travelled via Northern Ireland to get out of being sent to Rwanda. ‘How gardai escorted 50 immigrants on to ferries and back to the UK in three days,’ is the headline in the Irish papers.
Meanwhile, politicians standing in the European elections nail up hundreds of placards bearing their smiling faces on the roadsides. ‘Vote Pat the fisherman!’ says one independent.
There are mainstream, independents and breakaway parties, like Aontu, meaning Unity, who are former members of Sinn Fein in a tizz about immigration.
Sinn Fein itself is in a total pickle, because it’s hard to explain to working-class republicans, whose ancestors fought alongside Collins, why you’re giving Ireland away to an open borders project.
Sinn Fein allegedly means We Ourselves, but there’s also a theory it means Ourselves Alone, or even Ours Alone. How on earth do you sell full-scale, sudden onset multiculturalism if that’s your title?
Perhaps they’ll have to change the name to Gach Duine, which means Everyone’s.
My father vs the killer lion
Laikipia, Kenya
This month, in broad daylight on our Kenyan farm, a lioness mauled one of my bull calves. Before she could make a kill, a quick-witted herder intervened and drove the beast off. My son Rider loaded the injured calf into the pickup and brought it home, where he gently cleaned the tooth and claw wounds, then injected the poor creature with antibiotics and a painkiller. Big cat injuries go bad fast, but we all felt cheered that the calf, to my mind a future champion Boran bull, had survived and might pull through. The next morning the calf got to his feet and suckled his mother. What a sight that was. The morning after that, the mother was out grazing with her calf when she inadvertently bashed into a tree in which hung a beehive. The African bees, now angry, poured out of the hive and stung the injured calf to death. Rider was quite emotional about it. Life out here can be harsh.
When my family farmed in West Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, my father had a fine Boran bull called Larasha. He adored that bull, which he had bought from the great Boran rancher Miles Fletcher in Kenya. At that time, a troublesome lion was regularly killing cattle out in the bomas of the neighbouring Maasai pastoralists. One night Dad’s stockman was driving home in our old Series 3 Land Rover, which had no windscreen or top, when the headlights illuminated a male lion on the track. He slowed down, expecting the beast to move off, but instead it placed its front paws on the radiator and roared at him. The alarmed stockman accelerated forwards and the lion, with its growling mouth visible over the bonnet and its hind legs planted on the ground, pushed back. The Land Rover’s wheels churned in the dirt, the lion roared and the two were locked in a deadly scrum. Then suddenly, the creature leapt up on to the vehicle and bit right into the rubber of the spare tyre fixed on the bonnet. A blast of punctured air shot up into the lion’s face with sudden force, its fanged cheeks and black mane riffling in the wind, so that it was thrown backwards off the vehicle, allowing the now terrified cattleman to race off into the darkness.
On inspection later, a large tooth was found embedded in the shredded spare tyre. My father suspected this must be the lion that had been troubling the Maasai – and its injury during the encounter with the Land Rover now made it even more of a threat to livestock. Very soon afterwards, the beast barged its way into one of our cattle bomas, jumped on to the humped back of that fine bull Larasha. With one mighty swipe of his paw the lion broke the bull’s neck and immediately he set upon its carcass, tearing into its guts. The herdsmen, who had been snoring nearby, woke up and gave the alarm. With shouts and whoops, the cowboys tried to shoo off the lion, but only when a man appeared with a shotgun and began blasting away, did the bloodied predator withdraw.
In his younger days my father hunted a great deal, but when he married in his forties and settled down to ranch on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, he resolved never to shoot another living creature. Yet now, of course, he had to act. Alongside the Land Rover the family owned had a Datsun pickup with a closed cabin. The next evening, as night fell, he parked this vehicle in front of the half-devoured bull’s carcass, then took up position in the back of the pickup with his rifle and a torch. At the wheel of the Datsun he placed my mother, with instructions to switch on the headlights when he told her to do so. He would let her know by tugging on a string, which he passed through the window and tied to her little finger. On my mother’s lap lay a baby – me – blissfully sleeping, making not a sound.
The hours crept by and my mother, having almost held her breath in the tension for so long, began to doze. Suddenly she woke up with the gentle tugging of the string on her finger. In front of the car, she could hear sounds of gnawing and scrunching of bones. She flicked on the lights and there he was, the great lion, tearing at the bull Larasha’s flesh. Startled by the lights, he looked up, yellow-eyed, bloody-mouthed, freezing there for an instant before a single gunshot shattered the night. The lion collapsed on to the carcass and died.
I think I slept through the entire drama. The next morning some Maasai elders visited to celebrate the death of a creature that had slaughtered so many of their cattle. My father skinned the animal and cured the rawhide in a drum of cattle salt. Growing up, the hide was laid across the floor at home and I used to lie on it, urging Dad to tell me the story again. After a beer, if he was in a good mood, he sometimes would.
Reform wants the Tories destroyed
There was a very excitable young man on Sky News last week, talking about the Sky/YouGov MRP poll which suggested that the vast majority of Conservative MPs would lose their seats on 4 July and that those who didn’t would be stung to death by invasive killer Asian hornets which, reputedly, can eat up to 50 Tories in a single day. This would leave the Labour party and the unimaginably ghastly Ed Davey with the sort of majority reminiscent of those regularly recorded in the USSR or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
They are looking for their pound of flesh from a party they believe has gone awry and reneged on principle
‘This is a poll of such staggering consequences that all of us will remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when its results were made public exclusively on Sky News. In a sense it is much more important than the general election itself, because it tells us what might have happened if people voted the way we have suggested they will vote,’ he didn’t quite say, but came close to on a couple of occasions. If I had been producing the programme I would have put an arm around his shoulders, handed him a magazine procured from the top shelf of one of our less scrupulous newsagents and suggested he take himself to a cubicle to exorcise that priapic fervour before resuming his psephological elucidations.
I’m sorry, but the journos are beginning to get right on my wick in this campaign even if I am one myself, of course. The humourless sanctimony of Mishal Husain and the endless smuggery of Nick Robinson, for example. The elevation of the ephemeral and meaningless into talking points. The sheer glee with which the broadcast section of the fourth estate reports the projected Conservative debacle – it almost makes me sympathise with the Tories.
But not quite. They are beyond rescue. They cough up last-minute, owl-pellet policies on immigration and transgender stuff, forgetting that they have had 14 years to address these issues and yet did close to naff all, instead allowing the country to record hugely damaging levels of inward migration and watched, unmoved, as all that shocking Tavistock Clinic business continued unhampered. It’s a bit late in the day to suddenly find yourself with a conscience, a bit like a Buddhist drug dealer and people-trafficker with a terminal illness splashing out millions on charitable projects in order to bolster his karma before he kicks the bucket. I have grave doubts about that poll, incidentally: the polls in general are all over the place and I suspect that the shy Tory phenomenon is still having an effect, regardless of whether or not those opinion polls have the letters MRP affixed.
What does change the tilt of the election, however, is the entry of Nigel Farage from stage right. What had been, until Monday, a decidedly downbeat Reform campaign, with the party probably on course to record 5 or 6 per cent at best on polling day, its powder having been doused by the surprise decision of a July election, has been utterly transformed. Now the party can – and I suspect will – cause the Conservatives real problems, especially up the eastern seaboard of our island and also in the so-called Red Wall seats where the Tory wipeout will be close to totality.
What is happening is politically fascinating. Both the Conservatives and Labour had tacked to the centre in order to convince that crucial tranche of floating voters that they were not extreme and could be trusted to be congenial, consensual and boring. As a consequence of this we have two parties – one on the right, one on the left – determined to snaffle the votes of those who believe that this drift to the middle has been a betrayal.
Please do not for a moment underestimate the political nous, intelligence and charisma of George Galloway and his Workers Party of Britain. He is about the only politician in the country who can come through an encounter with Andrew Neil and emerge at the very worst level and perhaps with three points in the bag. Left-wing he may well be, but he also understands – unlike Labour, the Lib Dems and the likes of Penny Mordaunt and Caroline Nokes – that the overwhelming majority of the country is not socially as liberal as our establishment might wish it to be.
Pursuing a radical McDonnellish economic policy along with a conservative social policy will win Galloway’s party votes over and above those from the Muslim community who have been drawn to him because of his support for Palestine. Likewise, while the polls looked as though they might be narrowing as previous Reform voters migrated back to the Tories, the triumphant emergence of Farage from the sidelines will convince a good million or so voters that they were right all along and that the Tories have betrayed every bit of goodwill they ever possessed with the electorate. The question then becomes which of these two parties will have the greatest effect. My suspicion is that Reform will do a little more damage to the Tories than George and co. will do to Labour.
The remarkable thing about these two supposed fringe parties is their reasons for standing. Galloway, during that interview with Neil, could not disguise his utter loathing for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party. Meanwhile, I have had plenty of meetings with the Reform activists, hither and thither, and the thing which unites them is a wish to destroy, totally and irrevocably, the Conservative party. Their hatred for the Tories is unquenchable. Therefore the sensible argument – that a vote for either of these parties leaves a greater evil, in the mind of the voter, more likely, does not really matter. Both are looking for their pound of flesh from parties which they believe have gone awry and reneged on principle. I am still not convinced that Labour’s majority will be quite so big as the priapic man on Sky News suggested, but the arrival of Farage into the room makes that a lot more likely.
Have you had the school gate VAT chat?
Another day closer to the general election and I’m at my daughter’s prep school in Oxfordshire. As has come to be the norm, I’m having a ‘VAT chat’ with a fellow mother.
Of course, we’ve known about Labour’s plan for months. It will lead to a likely 20 per cent rise in private-school fees. Recently, however, these VAT chats have intensified and become louder.
‘To think that other parents would vote Labour given what’s coming enrages me,’ a friend says
I begin with my usual opening gambit. ‘Isn’t it awful?’ I say, trying to convey my real sense of desperation that I will have to take my daughter out of the school that she loves, that our way of life is for the chopping block. My VAT chat buddy agrees vigorously, telling me that she doesn’t know what she will do either. We shake our heads before ending, as we always do, with the observation that the state sector will in no way be able to absorb the droves of children (estimated at 17.1 per cent) moving from the private sector into state schools. It is a soothing, if totally ineffectual, conversation.
Not all VAT chats are alike. Sometimes, I judge my interlocutor poorly. One mother is different: she is not, I sense, that bothered about the rise. It will not affect her children in the same way. She smiles and we trot out the same platitudes, but her heart isn’t in it. I smell no desperation and instead I feel rather embarrassed for bringing up the subject. I notice her loading her offspring into a brand-new Land Rover Defender at pick-up and am reminded that we are not in the same boat.
This is a strange reality. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t dream of starting an idle conversation at the school gates about politics, the cost of living, or indeed tax. I would certainly never make explicit judgments about people’s wealth to their faces. But we live in strange times. It has become abundantly clear that private school privilege is by no means an even playing field. As a fellow mother once said to me: ‘Either you’re loaded, or your parents pay, or you just can’t afford it.’ I know which camp we fall into.
I’m starting to suspect we aren’t all Tories, either. Surely not, I hear you murmur. Because wouldn’t that be crackers? To vote Labour even though you would be ludicrously out of pocket as a result?
I poll some mothers for answers. A friend tells me that her school WhatsApp group leads her to believe that there are, among the 7 per cent of the population who send their children to private schools, some who are voting Labour on ideological grounds. ‘I hide my Tory stripes,’ she says, fuming. ‘To think that other parents would vote Labour given what’s coming enrages me.’
Clearly, though, there are lots of parents who can afford a Labour government. The Conservative MP Greg Hands recently triggered a backlash when he asked a WhatsApp group for parents of students at St Paul’s school what they thought of Labour’s plans. The Tory minister was told in no uncertain terms that he should ‘stop assuming everyone’s a Tory’ and that some members felt it was ‘hard to justify’ private schools being exempt from VAT.
It occurs to me that I only conduct my VAT chats with other mothers. I don’t find myself sidling up to fathers and asking them about the bomb about to blow up their family finances. The VAT chat is a distinctly feminine – and specifically maternal – conceit. Mothers smile cannily, but we give nothing away. It is a game we are very good at. It is a toss of the hair, a flick of the bracelet, a fumble with the designer bag.
Some VAT chats are, apparently, quite upbeat, more strident. Just not the ones I have. One friend points out that the fees have already risen by 16 per cent in the past two years and ‘the exodus hasn’t happened yet’. Another mother tells me that she felt rather affronted when her VAT chat went off piste and she was lectured by a fellow parent on the merits of the local grammar school.
I wonder if there is a sense of foregone conclusion about next month’s election result. Even my daughter’s school seems resigned to what is about to happen. I’ve seen the emails: ‘Should the Labour party win the next general election,’ they write with bowed head, ‘parents have enquired about the possibility of paying fees in advance.’ Some schools are even offering options whereby the entire cost of the school fees can be paid in one lump sum, presumably to avoid any VAT. Who are these people, who can afford to pay so far ahead? Fellow parents, that’s who. Just not us.
How would Athenians have dealt with Donald Trump?
Has Humpty-Trumpty had a great fall, or a great bounce? That will depend on what the Great American Public thinks was at stake in his trial. It was ever thus in the democracy of ancient Athens.
In the absence of a state prosecution service, all legal cases in ancient Athens were brought by individuals. But a jury trial often had to await the result of an attempt to settle out of court. This consisted of two mediation processes: one private and, if that failed, the other public under an appointed arbitrator. If there was still no agreement, the case went to trial before a randomly selected jury of between 200 and 1,000 Athenians, selected from an annually empanelled body of 6,000 male citizens in good standing, aged over 30.
There were no presiding judges, barristers, solicitors, rules of evidence (etc.), and no cross-questioning of witnesses, whose evidence was read out. The two parties each made their case in a single (timed) speech, the jury retired and without further discussion, let alone instructions from legal authorities, produced a majority verdict by secret ballot, which could not be appealed. The people had spoken, with no help from experts.
The speeches that survive were composed by professional speech-writers like Demosthenes. Trained in the art of persuasion, they knew all the tricks. Since their clients must have been wealthy – and it was the wealthy who financed public gymnasia, theatrical performances, choral and religious events and the costs of war, in particular the equipping and running of triremes – the speeches regularly harped on the enormous benefits which Athens enjoyed because of the defendant’s generosity. Surely the jury should prioritise his worth to Athens over any charge he might face!
So with Trump. The result of the forthcoming presidential election will hinge on the voters’ assessment of his value to America. That’s democracy. But the fact is that he is a convicted criminal, and that is justice. How does that play into the image of the President of the United States, leader of the free world?
I’m a lifelong Tory. Should I vote Reform?
For more than 30 years, I have knocked on doors and dutifully recorded voting intentions. I’m sure every party has their own abbreviations but during my Tory canvassing career, ‘U’ stood for undecided. I often wondered at – and, in part, admired – those people who were genuinely open to any party. It was an affliction that I did not suffer from, but I could see its merits.
If people like me don’t vote Tory, Keir Starmer will, of course, have an even bigger majority
Now that Nigel Farage has entered the race for a Reform party whose agenda is very close to the principles I’ve always believed in, I am, for the first time, a ‘U’. I live in the constituency of Boston and Skegness. My Conservative candidate, Matt Warman, is defending a 25,000 majority. He is not a bad man but he is a One Nation Tory: that is to say, the group which is to my mind potentially destroying the most successful political party in history – draining Conservative values and leaving it barely distinguishable from Labour.
Only once before have I thought that my party had deserted me and all those with views and convictions like mine: when Theresa May tried to stop Britain properly leaving the EU. Only then did I temporarily join the Brexit party. But that was on a clear and separate principle: to honour the result of the referendum and return sovereignty to our great nation. Like millions of Brexit party voters, I later returned to the Tories under Boris Johnson. So should I support the party of which I am a member – and have been (except for my Brexit party months) since 1984 – or my local Reform candidate, my old colleague and boss Richard Tice? I confess: I am confused.
If the 2024 Conservative manifesto were similar to the 1979 one, I would have no hesitation in staying true blue. Margaret Thatcher had a clear world view and you knew what she stood for and what she planned to do. You could join her or not and know what it meant to be a Thatcherite. Her small-state, low-tax, freedom-defending, equality-of-opportunity Conservatism is the one I’ve always believed in. That is why I’m backing the Popular Conservative group of MPs that includes Liz Truss and my brother Jacob. They are fighting to get these same ideas included in the Tory manifesto. True Conservatives like them – and the party still has many – would certainly have my vote.
But the values of Popular Conservatism are, in effect, the values of Reform. So why do I not want to vote for the party that most closely represents my beliefs? Because not only does it have policies I fundamentally disagree with but its loathing of the Conservatives will let in more socialists. Reform won’t win enough seats for government or opposition. Just impotence.
I believe the best way to promote change is to support the Conservative candidates who do stand for a small state, low taxes, security and individual freedom. But in my constituency, the only candidate standing up for such values is Tice. Warman is one of those blancmange types who could have been moulded in the Labour party or the slightly more liberal end of the Lib Dems. Such people don’t cut it with voters like me, floating Conservative voters who delivered the Tory majority last time. We look for conviction, direction, principle and values.
If people like me don’t vote Tory, Keir Starmer will, of course, have an even bigger majority – and that I certainly don’t want. But if voters reward the Tories for abandoning their principles, where would that take us? The Tory manifesto will give the party a chance to return to its core beliefs and win more votes. Conservatism is more popular than it is credited with, but only if it does what it says on the tin.
Reform will not win in Boston and Skegness, where the party is currently projected to come in third place. But I can’t disrupt my whole life and move to a constituency where a more genuinely Conservative MP is standing, just in order to vote for them. If you were me, what would you do?
Watch: minister squirms on rising tax burden
Oh dear. As the Conservative £2,000 tax claim continues to implode, poor Bim Afolami has been sent out on the airwaves to prop up his party. Only Sky News aren’t taking his defence quite as well as he might have hoped.
‘How much has tax gone up under the Conservatives over the last parliament term, per household?’ Sky News’s Sophie Ridge quizzed the former Tory politician.
‘Well it’s difficult to calculate,’ Alofami confessed, before his interviewer stepped in again.
‘I’ll give you the answer,’ Rigby replied. ‘Since 2019, according to our Economics Data Editor Ed Colway and analysing OBR figures, taxes have gone up £13,000 per household since 2019. £2,000 sounds like a bit of a bargain in comparison, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t recognise that number, frankly, because I’ve never seen that calculation,’ Alofami stuttered. ‘What I know is that the real disposable income, the amount of money that actually somebody is left with…is over £1,000 higher…now than it was in 2010.’
It’s all becoming rather awkward…
Watch the clip here:
Is Stephen Flynn’s seat really at risk from Labour?
In public, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is all humility. Starmer might currently be heading towards a general election landslide victory but the line is consistent: The party’s taking nothing for granted. Privately? Well, one of two of the party’s candidates and strategists might concede they expect things to go rather well for them on July 4. Quite a few will admit they expect a landslide.
In Scotland, confidence among the Labour lot is so strong that they have their eyes on a win that would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago. The Times has reported today that Labour fancies its chances of unseating the SNP’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn in Aberdeen South. Polls currently show Labour leading the nationalists by 10 points and so a certain degree of optimism might be permissible but, in 2019, Flynn won by more than 20,000 votes while Labour’s candidate came fourth with fewer than 4,000. I detect in the Times story a desire by Labour spinners to wind up Flynn — rather than any genuine belief that they can unseat him.
In fact, if Labour really wants to get rid of the SNP’s Westminster boss, the party should be encouraging its supporters to get behind the Conservative candidate. The Tories came second last time and have a better chance of ending — or pausing — Flynn’s career than Labour does. And anyway, Labour has never done particularly well in the north of Scotland where, for decades, the nationalists, the Liberal Democrats, and the Tories carved up the electoral spoils. This remains mostly true this time around, too. Sir Keir’s party could cause an SNP wipeout in the central belt — but it isn’t expected to take many Scottish seats in the North and North East.
But while Flynn can probably afford not to take Labour’s threat too seriously, he has every right to be rattled. SNP leader John Swinney — dragged out of semi-retirement to save his party after a year of chaos under Humza Yousaf — has revealed himself to be a politician of previously undiscovered incompetence. His decision to launch a fierce public defence of former health secretary Michael Matheson (now part-way through his 27-day Holyrood suspension and 54-day salary ban after his £11,000 iPad scandal) angered and baffled SNP general election candidate and MSPs. Rather than bringing his party together, Swinney has caused fresh turmoil. Sometimes he appears to be leading so badly that it’s like he’s doing it for a bet.
If Flynn returns to Westminster (as he should because the numbers are still just about on his side), he will be leader of a much diminished SNP group. The nationalists are expected to lose seats across Scotland’s central belt. Not so long ago, it was unthinkable that the SNP — for so long a party of rural Scotland — would ever win seats in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Now it is the incumbent in key constituencies.
Perhaps those Labour spinners weren’t completely on the wind-up. After all, if the SNP could take seats from Labour in its Glasgow heartland, perhaps Labour can return the favour in the SNP’s Highland and rural bases. For that, however, the party will need to finesse its oil and gas message a little more.
Vaughan Gething’s impressive failure
Vaughan Gething, First Minister of Wales, has managed to achieve the remarkable feat of losing a no confidence vote – just 77 days into his leadership. Defeat was inevitable after two of his Labour colleagues in the Welsh Senedd called in sick. During an often heated debate, Gething at one point appeared visibly emotional and had to be comforted by a colleague. The vote was called by the opposition Conservatives after a series of controversies that have dogged the first minister since he came into the top job. With Labour holding 30 out of the 60 seats in the Senedd, and with every other party set to vote against him, Gething needed the vote of every Labour member if he was to have any hope of winning. It simply proved too big a hurdle. In the end, he lost by two: 29 voted in favour of the no confidence resolution, while 27 voted against.
Damage limitation was underway even before the numbers were counted. Vicki Howells, chair of the Labour group of Members of the Senedd (MSs) said that Gething would not stand down if he lost the ‘gimmick’ vote. It is certainly the case that it is not legally binding and does not automatically trigger a process to remove him. But the reality is that losing is a significant blow to his authority and has seriously undermined his position as first minister. His defeat also poses a significant problem for the UK Labour leader, Keir Starmer, who so far has repeatedly backed the Welsh first minister.
How did it come to this for Gething? It is a situation that he has largely brought upon himself, through a mixture of political ineptitude and arrogance. The donations controversy has been needlessly allowed to overshadow his first weeks in office. The first minister has always maintained that the donations were declared and registered in accordance with the rules. A more nimble and experienced political operator would have recognised the need to deal with the issue decisively and sooner.
Gething has also become embroiled in controversy over whether as health minister during the pandemic he deleted text messages of relevance to the Covid Inquiry. The First Minister disputes this version of events but this hasn’t stopped suspicions in some quarters of decisions being covered up. He also attracted criticism for sacking Hannah Blythyn, his minister for social partnerships, suggesting she had leaked information to the media. She has denied this. Gething already has plenty of enemies on the opposition benches so it is quite a political own goal to have created enemies on his own side, at a time when he needs all the support he can muster. Such basic political miscalculations do not bode well for a newish leader who has no wider electoral mandate from Welsh voters. Nor is it good news that, in a relatively short period, he has managed to give his political opponents plenty of ammunition to back their charge that he simply isn’t up to the job. Andrew RT Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, has questioned his judgment, transparency and truthfulness. The Plaid leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, has accused him of undermining his office. The Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Jane Dodds said the no confidence vote was about ‘cleaning up politics’ in Wales. It is a damning charge sheet, more so for someone who has only been in post for such a short time. What his Labour colleagues in the Senedd make of his performance so far in the top job has not been made public.
Gething manages to give off the unenviable whiff of a political leader perpetually in the last-chance saloon. He was elected Welsh Labour leader on 16 March, and took office as first minister after a vote the following week. At the time he was hailed as the first black leader of a European country but his honeymoon period has been short-lived.
The newish First Minister’s political troubles highlight a deeper truth about Welsh politics: Wales has few experienced and capable politicians, and the talent pool is becoming shallower over time. Vaughan Gething, floundering from crisis to crisis in the top job, offers ample proof of this problem. He makes his predecessor as first minister, Mark Drakeford, seem like a political giant. And that’s really saying something.
Farage’s milkshake attack and the perils of progressivism
Much worse than the fact of a banana milkshake being chucked over Nigel Farage is the inevitable discourse it has occasioned. This has mostly involved progressives finding it very funny and others trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to reason with them. This is as good a time as any to reiterate a point I hope to drive home to all those who belong to a rival political tradition to progressivism, be they right-wingers, liberals, social democrats or Marxists. That point is this: you can’t reason with a progressive. Not because they are irrational, although some are, but because progressivism operates outwith the philosophical and ethical confines of these other ideologies.
It will do no good to appeal to questions of public safety (‘What if it had been acid?’), partisanship (‘What if someone threw a milkshake over Diane Abbott?’), hypocrisy (‘Aren’t you lot the ones who say speech is violence?’), or decorum (‘Shouldn’t politics be more dignified than this?’). It wasn’t acid and, besides, progressives consider Farage a fascist and therefore undeserving of feeling safe. If someone threw a milkshake over Diane Abbott that would be racist and/or misogynistic, and if it was Chris Bryant it would be homophobic, and if it was Zarah Sultana it would be Islamophobic, and if the left-leaning target had no protected characteristic it would be a reflection of how far-right misinformation had radicalised the shake-chucker.
The charge of hypocrisy isn’t going to fly, unlike the milkshake, because no progressive has ever said speech is violence or because all progressives agree speech is violence but only speech against marginalised communities. As for decorum, that’s a cringe boomer objection, unless the stunt in question embarrassed progressives, in which case we would hear from the FT, Newsnight and several dozen centrist dad podcasts that these were exactly the sort of juvenile antics that put voters off politics.
All political movements indulge in situational ethics to some extent but for progressives there is no other ethic. Conduct is judged not on consequences, utility or obligations but on the character of the person carrying out the conduct and the person it is carried out against. This is the Golden Rule of progressivism: do unto others as they may not do unto you for they are gammons.
Thus a course of action might be wholly identical to another except for the personalities involved and the progressive will come to fundamentally different conclusions about its moral worthiness. What matters is whether those involved are good or bad people. Good people are people with high-status opinions and attitudes, which is to say progressives. Bad people are those with low-status opinions and attitudes, which is to say non-progressives. Thus is politics divided into in-groups and out-groups. Progressivism is bullying for nerds.
It is pointless trying to convince a progressive that it is wrong or unwise or counterproductive to toss a milkshake over Nigel Farage because doing so will only become wrong, unwise or counterproductive as and when the immediate interests of progressivism require it. This analysis will be dismaying to those still convinced that politics is about reasoned debate and persuasion, a vigorous competition of ideas in the pursuit of the common good. It’s a noble ideal in the best traditions of liberalism and pluralism but just as we are drifting into a post-liberal order we are being borne towards a post-pluralist one too.
Politics is no longer a contest over policies, concepts or even legitimacy. It is about identifying an enemy, vilifying him and imposing your will on those who think like him. It is about setting the in-group on the out-group.
Will Vaughan Gething follow Truss and Yousaf?
There’s something in the British waters right now – and it’s not Ed Davey on his paddleboard. After Liz Truss in Westminster and Humza Yousaf at Holyrood, could Vaughan Gething be the next leader of a UK government to find himself out of office in a record space of time?
The Welsh First Minister this evening lost a confidence vote in the 60-member Senedd by 29 votes to 27. Labour holds exactly half of the seats with 30 members, with 16 Tories, 13 representatives for Plaid Cymru and a solitary Liberal Democrat. Two of Gething’s backbenchers were off sick and thus missed tonight’s vote, which followed an afternoon of passionate debate in the Welsh parliament.
Even before the vote, Welsh Labour figures close to Gething were arguing that this was not a binding vote and that his real mandate came from the Welsh people. Speaking afterwards Gething said that he was proud to be the First Minister of Wales and plans to ‘carry on’, having served less than 100 days in office. This insistence has not deterred his critics from demanding his head. ‘Vaughan Gething has lost the confidence of the people of Wales’ said Andrew RT Davies of the Welsh Conservatives. ‘He has lost the confidence of the Senedd.’ Gething has repeatedly criticised the UK government over the past five years for not ‘respecting’ Wales and its parliament. By failing to respect the outcome of today’s vote, he risks opening up Labour to allegations of hypocrisy .
Today’s drama comes after a scandal-plagued four months in office in which Gething has faced numerous questions about the £200,000 he accepted from a businessman who was twice convicted of environmental offences. That money was accepted during a tight leadership race in which Gething only narrowly triumphed over rival Jeremy Miles by 52 per cent to 48 per cent. That, arguably, was his ‘original sin’. Having won by such a narrow margin, Gething failed to then reach out to supporters of his rival. He thus never successfully stamped his authority on the party – leading to tonight’s humiliation.
The European elections will test the AfD’s strength
As Olaf Scholz gathers alongside other European leaders on the beaches of Northern France tomorrow to commemorate 80 years since the allied invasion of Normandy, the German Chancellor may have another D-Day in mind. Tomorrow morning, the polls open across the continent for the European parliamentary elections.
Over the coming three days, voters in each EU member state will vote for candidates put forward by their home country’s national parties. The natural result of this model is that voters tend to cast their ballots based on domestic concerns, rather than what those MEPs might necessarily be able to do for them in Brussels. As such, for Scholz and his traffic light coalition, this is the first time Germans will be voting on their record in government – and likely also the first taste of what’s to come when Germany heads to the polls for its federal election in about 18 months’ time.
The AfD can take some comfort from the fact they are expected to win bigger than Scholz’s SPD
In the two and a half years since Scholz became Chancellor, barely a month has gone by without some parliamentary scrap between his SPD party and its FDP and Green party coalition partners. The parties have rowed over everything from how much aid to send to Ukraine and when, whether to ban combustion engine cars, replace boilers with heat pumps and how to rejuvenate the country’s stuttering economy. In short, there are very few issues the three parties have managed to agree on.
Unfortunately for Scholz, the German public has taken note – and blames him for the fallout. According to a poll conducted this weekend by ARD Deutschlandtrend, three quarters of those Germans surveyed are currently dissatisfied with the work of Scholz’s government.
Intriguingly, the same poll suggests that voters’ top concern going into the European elections is preserving peace in Europe. This reflects the long-standing fear of many Germans that, if provoked by Nato, Putin could extend the frontiers of his war beyond Ukraine and further into Europe. Scholz has consistently struggled to balance a nervous domestic mood with pressure from Nato allies to send ever more weapons and aid to Kyiv. His concession last Friday that Ukraine could use German-made weapons to strike military targets on Russian soil may well put paid to his efforts to portray himself as the ‘peace Chancellor’ and cost him at the ballot box.
Adding to Scholz’s domestic woes over the past two years has been the steady rise of the insurgent Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. The AfD has cashed in on the debate over immigration, the seeds of which were sown by Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel in 2015 with her infamous ‘open door’ asylum policy when approximately one million migrants entered Germany in the course of a single summer. The AfD’s strong anti-migrant messaging is paying off: while immigration is a top priority for 17 per cent of German voters, according to ARD Deutschlandtrend, this rises to 46 per cent among those intending to vote for the far-right party over the coming days. It seems that many Germans view this as more than just a domestic issue: data from a poll conducted for the TV channel ZDF, 57 per cent of Germans want the EU to tighten up its refugee policy.
While the AfD entered 2024 with an all-time national polling high of 22 per cent, the party has recently taken a hit thanks to several scandals which have dented its reputation. The party’s lead candidate for the EU elections, Maximilian Krah, has repeatedly come under fire since April when the story broke that he had been questioned by the FBI on a trip to the US in December on suspicion of having received money from pro-Russian activists with ties to the Kremlin. Shortly after that one of his aides was arrested due to allegedly spying for China. The AfD’s leadership distanced themselves from Krah, but the rot had already set in and the party’s popularity began to drop. To make matters worse, in an interview in mid-May with the Italian paper La Repubblica, Krah stated he would ‘never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal’. Such Nazi-apologist rhetoric, particularly coming from a member of Germany’s most far-right party, has predictably gone down like a lead balloon at home.
Krah’s comments proved a step too far even for the AfD’s EU parliamentary faction partner, the far-right French National Rally party, whose leader Marine le Pen effectively kicked the AfD out of the Identity and Democracy faction both parties belong to. As a result, Krah stepped down from the party leadership and stopped campaigning – although too late to have his name removed from the ballot paper.
With many AfD supporters unimpressed with the shambolic nature of the party’s EU election campaign, as polling day dawns, they are predicted to win just 14.8 per cent of the vote share. This is a significant fall, but the party leadership can take some comfort from the fact they are expected to win bigger than Scholz’s SPD, which pollsters predict will take just 14.1 per cent of the vote.
Predictions for the other two incumbent traffic light parties look considerably grimmer. The Green party is projected to lose a larger vote share than any of the other parties combined, bringing it down to 14.2 per cent. Meanwhile, the FDP is predicted to win just 4 per cent of the vote. Were this the federal election, that would not even be enough to get them over the proportional representation threshold to hold any seats in the Bundestag.
Germany’s biggest winner this weekend will be the CDU/CSU party – currently the leading opposition party in Berlin. They are expected to win around 29 per cent of the vote share, and current polling suggests they would do even better were the federal election to be held now too. The left-wing Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), only set up in January, is likely to emerge as the underdog in this election – its first electoral test. The party is predicted to win 6 per cent, which bodes well for its chances at next year’s election.
Voting closes on Sunday night, with the results expected to trickle in through the night into Monday. However badly the SPD does in the election, Scholz still has a while yet before he has to face the German electorate in person. A lot can change between now and then. But few have much faith that Scholz can successfully turn things around.
Will Netanyahu declare war on Hezbollah?
The war in Gaza is perceived internationally as a limited affair, pitting Israel against the Islamist Hamas organisation within the confines of a narrow strip of territory on the Mediterranean coast. This view has long been reductive. A number of other fronts are active as a result of the outbreak of war in Gaza. And one of them – Lebanon – is currently showing signs of erupting into full conflict.
In November, the Yemeni Ansar Allah (Houthis) movement commenced their targeting of shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. In the same month, the Iran-allied Shia militias in Iraq began attacks on Israel, and on US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria. Today, if one includes the West Bank where militias armed by smuggling routes from Syria across Jordan engage sporadically against the IDF, there are five active fronts in this war: Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen (or the Gulf of Aden).
Hezbollah is a vastly more powerful organisation than Hamas
For most of the last eight months, the scale and intensity of the fighting in Gaza has eclipsed these other zones of engagement. There are signs, however, that this may now be changing. Specifically, the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps proxy, in the Israel-Lebanon border area has sharply increased in scope and intensity in recent days. This escalation has probably not yet reached its peak.
Daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the IDF have been taking place since October last year. Around 60,000 Israelis have left their homes in the border area and become, effectively, refugees in their own country. On the other side of the line, around 100,000 Lebanese have departed northwards. To a 5km depth along the border, normal life has effectively ceased to exist in Israel. With bitter humour, Israelis now often refer to this area as Hezbollah’s ‘security zone’, referencing the buffer zone that Israel held north of the borderline between 1985 to 2000.
In the daily tactical exchanges now taking place, Israel is maintaining the upper hand. This is reflected in the casualty figures on both sides. Ten IDF soldiers and 14 Israeli civilians have been killed in the fighting against Hezbollah over the last eight months. On the other side, Hezbollah acknowledges 330 killed, alongside an unknown number of civilians. Targeted killings of senior movement cadres are taking place every few days.
But Israel’s tactical advantage is not impacting the larger strategic situation. And the low casualty figures on the Israeli side are partly explained by the northern border area being effectively de-populated. Currently, residents of northern border communities are unwilling to return to their homes, not only because of the current state of conflict, but also because the presence of Hezbollah fighters along the border, sometimes just a few meters from Israeli homes, raises the possibility of another 7 October type attack on a larger scale.
The school year in Israel begins on 1 September. As things currently look, thousands of Israeli families are set to face continued severe disruption to their lives, unable to return to their homes. At a wider level, the effective conceding of an area of territory under duress in this way is an unprecedented occurrence for Israel. If allowed to stand, it will represent a significant and ominous achievement for its Islamist enemies.
In recent days, the range and intensity of the exchanges of fire has increased. Israel killed 17 Iran-linked operatives in an airstrike close to the Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday. The death toll included two Iranian citizens, one of whom, Sayeed Aviar, was a senior IRGC operative. Three Lebanese Hezbollah men were also among the dead. Closer to the border, Hezbollah operatives were taken out by Israel in the last few days. Most senior among them was Ali Hussein Sabra, an engineer involved in developing the movement’s air defence capacities.
In response to these successes, Hezbollah fired rockets and drones at Katzrin in the southern Golan Heights, and the border towns of Kiryat Shmoneh. A drone also fell on the city of Nahariya further south, the first time that this area has been successfully targeted in the current conflict. Large brushfires were ignited by Hezbollah’s ordnance in the Katzrin area and on the Ramim Ridge.
The unacceptable nature of the current situation on the northern border area, and the failure of the current level of Israeli actions against Hezbollah to induce the movement to cease its attacks, are leading to increasing calls in Israel for a sharp intensification of operations against the Lebanese Shia organisation.
IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi said on Tuesday following an assessment with military officials at a base in Kiryat Shmoneh that: ‘We are approaching the point where a decision will have to be made, and the IDF is prepared and very ready for this decision… we are prepared after a very good process of training… to move to an attack in the north.’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said a day later in Kiryat Shmoneh: ‘Anyone who thinks that they can harm us and we will sit on our hands is sorely mistaken.’
So, what will happen now? Hezbollah is a vastly more powerful organisation than Hamas, with a fearsome array of rockets and missiles and a large, experienced ground force. Israel has no partners or allies within Lebanon. The country is today under the effective domination of Hezbollah and Iran. A major operation against the group, from the air or the ground, will almost certainly produce missile fire on central Israel. It could also trigger increased attacks from Iranian forces or their allies in Syria and Iraq. On the other hand, the present situation is obviously untenable, unless the government of Israel wishes to concede the country’s northern border communities to Lebanon’s IRGC franchise. It is a difficult decision for Netanyahu.
Reform’s Farage poll bounce spells trouble for the Tories
‘I’m back’. Nigel Farage’s two-word tweet on Monday heralded the return of one of Westminster’s great celebrities. Barely 48 hours later, we are already seeing the impact that he is making in the polls. A YouGov survey published this afternoon suggests Reform are now on 17 per cent of the vote – just two points behind the Tories. It is the first polling done since Farage announced he was standing in Clacton and returning as leader. ‘It’s all about momentum’, he told me last week in Dover. Reform looks to have that in spades.
The survey – which gives Labour a 21 point lead on 40 per cent – is also the first done by YouGov since it announced it was tweaking its methodology. In a statement, the polling giant confirmed that ‘Reform UK's vote share rose three points regardless of which methodology was used, and so their increase in vote is not related to the methodology change.’ Under the previous methodology, Labour would have had a 27 point lead and Reform would have been on equal polling to the Tories.
Some Conservative backbenchers are sceptical. ‘I’m starting to thinking there is a polling conspiracy,’ says one. ‘It’s just not like that on the doors.’ It is true to say that Reform’s ground game is limited and that, under Richard Tice, they continued to flatter to deceive. But three points is still a decisive shift and one enough to hurt the Tories. For them, the danger is that the direction of travel only continues to accelerate as Farage gets more exposure – starting with the seven-way leaders’ debate on Friday.
For much of 2023, Tory MPs asked themselves the question ‘92 or 97’ – whether this election result would produce a narrow majority or a crushing defeat. The real danger for them is that the answer is Canada ‘93, when the governing centre-right party in Ottawa got wiped out by a party called – you guessed it – Reform.
Farage has repeatedly said that this transatlantic precedent was a factor in the renaming of the Brexit party back in 2020. If his party’s polling continues to improve, then Rishi Sunak’s Tories will fear that what happened in Canada could be about to repeat itself here on 4 July.
The Nigel Farage milkshaking is no laughing matter
Emerging from a pub after his campaign launch in Clacton yesterday afternoon, Nigel Farage was milkshaked. A 25-year-old woman has been charged with assault by beating and criminal damage. The incident has, quite rightly, been widely condemned. Farage’s Conservative opponent in Clacton, Giles Watling, tweeted that ‘every candidate has the right to campaign without fear of violence or intimidation’. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper called it a ‘disgrace’ and ‘completely unacceptable and wrong’. They were right to condemn the attack: this act of narcissistic nihilism is an affront to the democratic process, whatever side of the debate you are on.
Farage has done his best to shrug off the attack
So it has been disappointing to see that, since the news broke, some people have essentially suggested that Farage had it coming. In doing so, they have allowed their ill-concealed contempt for Farage and his politics to get in the way of the basic principles of a civilised democracy.
Take Sky News, where one correspondent informed viewers that the milkshaking had been ‘quite a humbling moment’ for the now leader of Reform UK. Really? There seems to be a rather unfortunate implication here: that by daring to stand for Parliament, Farage had been showing a pridefulness that in some sense earned him a soaking. The suggestion seems to be that politicians who challenge the establishment consensus really ought to know their place.
The correspondent continued in the same vein, adding that the incident was ‘a good reminder that [Farage] is a very divisive figure here in Clacton’. The Independent also adopted a worrying tone in its write-up, gloating that ‘the divisive right–winger was left covered in milkshake’.
I wonder how those ridiculing Farage would feel if they had a cup of unknown liquid hurled into their face in front of hundreds of people? The memory of Jo Cox and David Amess, MPs killed as they served their constituents, should really be enough to remind us that politicians’ safety is no laughing matter.
What’s worse is that we know that this kind of ‘he had it coming’ approach in the media extends to even more serious kinds of political violence. Last month, there was an assassination attempt against the prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, who was shot five times as a public meet and greet. He was left fighting for his life.
Fico, like Farage, is a Eurosceptic populist, and in the wake of this shocking attack, media around the world were quick to point out that he was ‘polarising’ and that he had supposedly made ‘pro-Russian comments’. Sky News listeners learnt that Fico was ‘very divisive in Slovakia’ and ‘very divisive in the EU’, which apparently means ‘it’s not surprising that this sort of event might take place’. As Brendan O’Neill noted on Coffee House: ‘It is a shocking abdication of both journalistic objectivity and basic morality to see the attempted murder of a PM and think: “Well….”.
While Farage’s campaign has done its best to shrug off the attack, the incident has quite understandably affected the 60-year-old. Describing it to ITV News later over a pint, he said: ‘I don’t know what was thrown at me but it hit me in the face… [it was] quite frightening’.
Farage has been milkshaked before, back in 2019 while campaigning for the Brexit party. Asked why this kept happening to him, the veteran campaigner was at first able to use it to burnish his populist credentials: it’s because he, unlike Rishi Sunak, does ‘old-style street campaigning’.
Pressed further, however, and it was clear the incident had rattled him. This was only a milkshake but it could have been something more serious – is that something he thinks about? Farage sighs, visibly distressed: ‘It’s a very tough question to ask. I try not to.’
Alex Salmond’s Alba party isn’t serious about the general election
In the second-floor room of a building on Tufton Street, Scotland’s former first minister Alex Salmond delivered a press conference this afternoon to London journalists. An untouched tray of biscuits sat on a coffee table at the back, while the rest of the space was rather merch-light thanks to forgetful organisers not transporting more materials from Scotland: a party banner was illuminated on a TV screen and seats were covered in ‘general election briefing’ PDF print-outs. Hydrating not with water but with Lucozade — the party leader confessed a ‘lifelong addiction’ to the sugary drink, admitting it was neither Irn Bru nor Aperol Spritz, a favourite tipple of some nationalist figures — Salmond didn’t spend too long on Alba’s general election ambitions before he cut to the chase.
Revealing that he will not, in fact, stand to be a Westminster candidate in the upcoming general election, the former First Minister announced that he is eyeing up a Holyrood return instead. Salmond told journalists today that he now plans to stand as a candidate for the Aberdeenshire constituency of Banffshire and Buchan Coast in 2026. It’s news to Angus MacNeil: a former SNP man campaigning as an Independent for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, who Alba is endorsing. ‘That is damning of where the SNP are in 2024,’ MacNeil remarked on hearing the update, ‘and if Alex Salmond is talking about standing at 2026, that would tell me that he is not expecting the SNP to do anything about independence before then.’
But is Salmond truly serious about independence, or is he more concerned with ruffling SNP feathers? He announced today that he will be standing 19 Alba candidates across Scotland, eight of which will contest seats currently on a knife-edge between the SNP and Labour, or the SNP and the Lib Dems. Most of the rest will stand in seats across the central belt – which is strange, given that one of Alba’s strongest policy stances is on oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. Alba’s leader insists that he isn’t looking to split the independence vote. ‘We are going to mobilise the independence vote,’ he promised. Salmond then hinted that Alba wasn’t really interested in targeting SNP voters either. Instead, his three-year-old party is keen to focus on the politically-homeless, indy-sympathetic group that Salmond worries may simply not turn out on polling day:
We are in a situation now where 50 per cent or so of the people of Scotland believe in independence, but only around 30 per cent are voting SNP. That means there’s 20 per cent of independence supporters who are either currently, according to the polls, not voting or voting for unionist parties.
Our intention is to take the votes of people who have been so disillusioned by the lack of progress towards independence over ten long years that they’re actually going to sit in their homes in the absence of an Alba candidate, or alternatively, vote for a unionist party.
And it’s in that vein of convincing the unconvinced, rather than stealing voters away from other parties, that Alba is working with MacNeil. Salmond’s pro-indy alternative hasn’t managed to persuade MacNeil (who was expelled from the SNP last year) to jump ship, but the apparently undaunted Alba leader brushed off the issue: ‘Angus made a pledge that he would stand as an independent nationalist. I wouldn’t expect Angus to go back on that pledge.’ MacNeil’s reasoning is that he wants to avoid more upheaval, given that his constituents already had to face ‘one phase of change from SNP to Independent’. When pushed, the Na h-Eileanan an Iar politician said that joining Alba wouldn’t have hurt his chances, ‘not detrimentally’ — but the issue remains that the party is on track to win no seats in 2024.
Ultimately the focus for Alba isn’t on 2024. The party’s standing of candidates is more of a popularity stunt than a serious gesture.
Ultimately the focus for Alba isn’t on 2024. The party’s standing of candidates is more of a popularity stunt than a serious gesture. Alba’s chance of significantly splitting the pro-independence vote in Scotland is minor, with left-wing parties like the Greens more of a threat – both in 2024 and 2026. Salmond is looking ahead to Holyrood and has set himself the target of winning 15 per cent of the vote share (double the Scottish Greens result in 2021) and therefore ‘20 seats or more’. ‘I think Alba is on the rise,’ the former FM added. ‘The task for us is to win the 20 or so seats that will require us to be the strong left arm of the independence coalition.’
And all Salmond’s talk of coalitions raises the question: what exactly is he hoping for in the Scottish elections? Holyrood constituency polling by Redfield and Wilton has the SNP and Labour almost neck and neck, at 33 per cent to 32 per cent — with the nationalists making a slight recovery from a Labour lead in previous weeks. Might Salmond already be considering what would happen if the SNP didn’t win a majority in the Scottish parliament elections? New First Minister John Swinney and his party are still navigating Holyrood as a minority government – and have found that they can’t necessarily rely on the Scottish Greens for back-up after Humza Yousaf’s rather abrupt dismissal of his coalition partners in April.
Certainly Salmond appeared softly admiring of the SNP’s current Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, who has his own ambitions to be Scotland’s First Minister. The Alba leader suggested that had Flynn been leading the SNP, the party would have a stronger stance on oil and gas licenses in the North Sea – not least because Flynn himself is defending the Aberdeen South seat in the general election. ‘Elections concentrate the mind,’ Salmond said today, discussing how he believes there is a way of reconciling oil and gas development with the future of the planet. ‘I think young Mr Flynn’s mind has been incredibly concentrated by [issues of oil and gas] over the last months. I dare say if he’d been the SNP leader that would have been their policy.’
Salmond wouldn’t be pressed on whether he would prefer a Flynn-led SNP than a party headed by Swinney, but threw out some advice for his old colleagues anyway. ‘I will say to whoever the SNP leader is, it’s high time they started to act not just as leader of a political party, but leader of a national movement.’ And it’s a movement Salmond has high hopes of helping lead again, come 2026.