Election

Read the latest General Election news, views and analysis.

Wednesday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

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

James Heale James Heale

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

Laurie Wastell

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

Lucy Dunn

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

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour is paying the price for Starmer’s failure to refute the £2,000 tax claim

The Tories have had their first good 24 hours of the election campaign. The £2,000 tax claim made by Rishi Sunak (which we crunch here) is dominating the chatter following last night’s TV debate, and the amount of energy Labour frontbenchers are putting into refuting it shows they feel Keir Starmer failed to squash it in the debate itself. When Andrew Mitchell, the Deputy Foreign Secretary, was interviewed about the figure by Andrew Neil on Times Radio just now, he suggested that the calculation was probably an ‘understatement’. Significantly, though, he refused to repeat the claim made by Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho this morning that the figure came from ‘independent

James Heale James Heale

Tory favourites enjoy mixed success in safe seats

Claims of stitch-ups in seat selections are as old as the Tory party itself. But the chaotic nature of this snap election and the Conservatives’ poor polling have produced an especially angry reaction among elements of the party grassroots. With Tory nominations set to close tomorrow, only one ‘safe’ seat now remains: Basildon and Billericay, the Essex stronghold that returned John Baron with a majority of 20,412 in 2019. For weeks, there have been rumours circulating that Tory chairman Richard Holden would switch to this seat from North West Durham. Today they have been confirmed. Holden is the sole name going forward to the local association at 8 p.m today.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

On Sunak’s maths, Tories will lift taxes by £3,000 per household

My colleague Ross Clark has shown how the Tories cooked up that £2,000 figure. They worked out the total cost of what they think Labour will do, using standard HM Treasury costings. Then, they divided that by the number of in-work households (18.4 million). This is a subset of the 21.4 million total UK households, so no pensioners or workless households. By choosing a smaller denominator, you concentrate the increase and conjure up a scarier figure. Then they quadruple-counted. So they took each year’s estimate for tax rise and then added them together over four years and – presto! – you end up with £2,000. But let’s apply a similar method to

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The truth about Labour’s fiscal black hole

It is small wonder that Treasury officials are unhappy about Conservative claims about Labour tax rises being attributed to them. The civil service is supposed to be neutral, and be seen to be neutral. James Bowler, permanent secretary at the Treasury, who wrote to the Labour party expressing concern that certain figures are being attributed to his officials, will almost certainly find himself having to work with a Labour government in a few weeks’ time.  There is one figure at the heart of the Conservative analysis of Labour’s tax and spending plans which really should be causing concern What the Conservatives have done in making the claim that Labour will

Robert Ford

Nigel Farage is turning the screws on the Tories

He’s back. After months of teasing and indecision, Nigel Farage launched himself fully into the fray of yet another election campaign on Monday, standing as the Reform UK candidate in UKIP friendly Clacton, and taking over from Richard Tice as leader of the party. The electrifying effect of this announcement might seem a bit odd, given that Farage has hardly been absent from screens and airwaves in recent months. But this decision to fully take the plunge matters, for three reasons. Firstly, it kills the squeeze on the Reform vote. The clear Tory strategy in the first fortnight has been to love bomb Reform UK supporters with socially conservative policy

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Is Labour really plotting a £2,000 tax grab?

Is the Labour party planning a £2,000 tax grab on households? That was Rishi Sunak’s main message last night during the first election debate on ITV – one which he was found by YouGov’s snap poll to have won (just). The Tories will ‘keep cutting taxes’, he said, while Labour will raise them. It took some time for Keir Starmer to hit back at the accusation, and the specific number, which he eventually called ‘absolute garbage’. Starmer said the £2,000 figure was based on ‘dodgy assumptions’ and had ‘glaring mistakes’ Where did the figure come from? And how accurate is it? The document, titled ‘Labour’s tax rises’ was put together

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Ashworth slams Sunak’s debate ‘lies’

Well, well, well. The gloves are off in the election campaign after Rishi Sunak accused his Labour opponent Keir Starmer of plotting a £2,000 tax grab. Both Conservative and Labour politicians have launched into heated post-match analysis following that claim which was made in Tuesday night’s ITV leaders’ debate — and they’ve taken their spin to the airwaves this morning. Shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth was one of the Labour spinners hard at work in the ITV press room on Tuesday evening and has continued the job on today’s morning round. Talking to LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Ashworth blasted the Prime Minister for ‘lying’ about Labour’s tax plans in a scathing

Peter Lampl

Education has all but disappeared from the election debate

More than 25 years ago, when I was setting up the Sutton Trust, the leader of the opposition, a fresh-faced Tony Blair, was touring the TV studios with a simple message, ‘Education, Education, Education’. And sure enough, during the 1997 election, Labour promised to cut class sizes on their famous pledge card. Fast forward quarter of a century, and we’re about to go into an election which many are comparing to 1997. But what has happened to education? It’s almost disappeared from the political agenda. Indeed, it has fallen off a cliff in terms of its political saliency. Keir Starmer’s opportunity mission includes education, but the policy substance and funding

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

How the Tories created Nigel Farage

Conventional Conservative wisdom once warned about the dangers of appeasement. Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of imperialism, may be the most cancelled figure in British literature, but I imagine even leftists can see how his lines in Danegeld apply to the Tory party’s appeasement of Nigel Farage: ‘And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we’ve proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane.‘ I guess, too, that before the rise of Ukip, all Conservative politicians knew Winston Churchill’s line that ‘an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last’. Sunak is leading the Tories to a

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sunak’s scrappy style worked, but he fought on a false premise

‘Gentlemen, please’, said Julie Etchingham, over and over again, as she chaired this ITV debate. She had given Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer both 45 seconds for answers and both had far more to say. ITV didn’t silence one microphone when the other was speaking so both were able to heckle, further complicating the format. Sunak’s tactic was to turn everything into a question for Starmer: ‘What are you going to do about tax / small boats/ taxing pensioners?’ Starmer’s general lack of answers came across, which will have been Sunak’s objective. I’d give the debate to Sunak – but it was closer than I thought it would be. And to win,

Steerpike Steerpike

‘Livid’ ex-Labour candidate resigns from party

Another day, another drama. Labour has been thrown back into the spotlight after deselected candidate Faiza Shaheen today announced her resignation from Sir Keir’s party in a rather scathing — and detailed — Twitter post. Shaheen was originally the selected for the Chingford and Woodford Green seat — but just last week, the left-wing candidate was ditched by party apparatchiks after reportedly liking social media posts that downplayed accusations of antisemitism. Hauled to a meeting with the party’s NEC, Shaheen was quizzed over her social media conduct before being dropped by Starmer’s army. The ex-candidate has certainly not kept quiet about her disappointment, lambasting Labour on BBC Newsnight last week:

Steerpike Steerpike

Farage doused in drink during Clacton trip

Reform’s new leader Nigel Farage has been busy wooing crowds in Clacton as he launched his election campaign in the Essex seaside constituency this lunchtime. But the visit didn’t go off without a hitch for poor Nige, whose trip was rather rudely ruined by a bystander who threw a drink at the politician as he left a local pub. The former Ukip leader was leaving Clacton’s Wetherspoons, the Moon & Starfish, when one decidedly disgruntled member of the public chose to make their feelings towards Reform’s newest candidate known. In what appears to be an attempted repeat of 2019’s milkshake attack — in which Farage was doused in the sugary

Andrew Tettenborn

Cracking down on the ECHR won’t save Sunak

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 many potential voters already mulling the idea of quietly jumping ship to Reform UK. The Prime Minister has failed badly in the presentation stakes. This matters. One of the chief attractions of Reform is that, for all their faults, they have never made any bones about their commitment to give notice to exit the ECHR

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why are the Tories playing Farage’s game?

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 their seats.  The response from the centre has been to move even further into Reform’s territory. Home Secretary James Cleverly was out and about this morning talking about immigration, and dropping hints that the Conservatives could make leaving the European Convention on Human Rights a manifesto commitment. Asked about it, Cleverly said: ‘The point that

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Clacton goes wild for Nigel Farage

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 his boss’s return. Much of Tice’s warm-up act was interrupted by shouts of ‘We love you Nigel’ from the crowd. ‘Send me to Parliament to be a bloody nuisance,’ Farage told the crowd When it was Farage’s turn to address voters, he spoke of his hope to be elected come 5 July as the MP