All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Ed Miliband is wrong. The greatest threat to climate action is not right wing billionaires buying up TV stations, as he said ahead of his conference speech today. It is expensive electricity. Instead of tackling Britain’s world beating energy costs, Miliband used his speech to announce a ban on fracking – an empty gesture to block himself
He wasn’t able to announce the £300 off household energy bills that was promised during the election campaign. Nor could he unveil any massive new solar farms or wind turbines. Still, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband did have one message to cheer the party faithful in his conference speech today: he is
Back in the day – in 1992 – the think tank I worked for commissioned a series of focus groups of swing voters in marginal seats. They had all voted Conservative in that year’s election, having toyed with and then deciding not to vote Labour. I thought of those voters yesterday, when the Prime Minister
Whisper it, but there’s a name on everyone’s lips at Labour conference. A man who clearly seems to be going places – if we look at the sheer number of times he’s been cited in Liverpool. Who is this whippersnapper? A young socialist exciting the grassroots? A rising cabinet star? Errr, not exactly: it’s Nigel Farage,
Human beings fundamentally hate blatant displays of unfairness. That’s why most people abhor those who jump or barge into queues, or politicians who preach one rule for the public and practice another for themselves. Even plans by Reform UK to reverse previously established terms of indefinite leave to remain, which could affect those who have
All is not well in Reform HQ. On Tuesday, Nigel Farage broadcast a statement where he claimed that Sir Keir Starmer’s rhetoric – dubbing Reform’s plans to scrap indefinite leave to remain ‘racist’ – risked inciting violence against his party’s activists and candidates. This morning, the party’s head of policy Zia Yusuf took to the
Is the Third Reich living rent-free in David Lammy’s head? Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister has accused Donald Trump of being a ‘neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’, likened the Tory European Research Group to Hitler’s National Socialists – and now he has claimed that Reform leader Nigel Farage ‘flirted’ with the Hitler Youth as a youngster. ‘I will leave it
Last week, Keir Starner swallowed Tony Blair’s argument for ID cards and announced that all we going to be forced to have them if we want a job, just as the former prime minister has been advocating for years. This week, however, the current PM has poured scorn on one of his predecessor’s cherished policies,
Lucy Letby’s barrister says she has ‘new hope’, as he prepares to submit 1,000 pages of fresh evidence that he believes will ‘clear her name’. In an ideal justice system, evidence that proves an inmate’s innocence would of course lead to their release, but we don’t have an ideal justice system, as I learned as
The Labour conference, given the government’s current levels of popularity – somewhere about the same rung occupied by, say, galloping dysentery or Huw Edwards – was always going to be a macabre spectacle. But there’s an aspect to this Grand Guignol that I wasn’t expecting; the unpleasant sight of various members of the cabinet vying,
Last week, the Office for National Statistics published data showing that income inequality in the UK has fallen to its lowest level since 1996. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that – you’ll have doubtless noticed the improvements in social capital, trust and general wellbeing yourself. How, exactly, does income inequality cause anything?
The news that Vladimir Putin is pushing for 135,000 new young recruits in ‘the biggest autumn conscription’ for nearly ten years comes as no surprise. Recently, the Russian leader’s war-machine has been scraping the bottom of the barrel: convicts freed from prison, men in their sixties, debt-ridden farmers, factory workers pulled straight off the line…and
The consensus before Keir Starmer’s speech to the Labour party conference was that he needed to make ‘the speech of his life’. He did so. It was not the greatest conference speech I’ve seen, far from it, but it was the best Starmer has made and not because it was shot through with content. However,
‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’. So wrote Dr Johnson. Sadly for the good Doctor he was an avowed Tory and so, according to the rules of Labour conference, a de facto evil and probably racist monster. Alas, if only the Labour party had heeded the great moralist’s words, we might have avoided the
Discussion of Donald Trump’s peace proposal for Gaza revolves around one question: who is for it and who is against it? Israel is for it, though mostly because it is backed into a corner and has no choice. The Arab states are for it, which is to be expected since they wrote it. The European
Is Labour serious about welfare reform? It hasn’t given that impression over the past year, given the flagship welfare reform bill ended up being gutted, largely because the Treasury had decided to use it as a vehicle for a load of blunt cuts, rather than the real – and very costly – business of wholesale
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We have just heard the Prime Minister’s headline speech at Labour Party Conference and – whisper it quietly – that might have been Keir Starmer’s best yet. As briefed out beforehand it was a patriotic address, with lots of flag waving in the room as he presented his version of patriotism in contrast to a
Keir Starmer’s keynote speech in Liverpool was punchier and more powerful than the Prime Minister’s usual interventions. The Labour leader announced that his party will scrap Tony Blair’s target that 50 per cent of children should go to university, replacing it with the aim of seeing two-thirds of kids get a degree or gold-standard apprenticeship.
Party conferences are less about conferring than about speeches and announcements. Today Keir Starmer revealed NHS Online, a virtual hospital of vast scope and wonderful promise. Patients will be able to swiftly connect to clinicians at a time and place to suit them. NHS Online, said Starmer, demonstrates that Labour favours ‘renewal’, while Reform only
Labour is again running scared on migration. At the party’s conference yesterday, Shabana Mahmood made a clear pitch to middle Britain on the subject. ‘You may not always like what I do,’ she said, addressing Labour’s left, but as regards migration we had to ‘question some of the assumptions and legal constraints that have lasted for a generation and more’. She would, she added, be tightening the rules on indefinite
Much of Labour conference has seen MPs taking aim at Nigel Farage and his Reform party, but it would appear some left-wingers have ended up in the firing line too. Onetime Labour member and all-time general annoyance Owen Jones had been running around Liverpool vox-popping politicians and delegates with his cameraman – but he managed
There are plenty of legitimate questions to be asked about the Trump-Blair peace plan for ending the conflict with Israel. Will Hamas ever agree to it? Will any peace deal hold? Will the wider Middle East get behind it? And will Sir Tony Blair ever be able to overcome the legacy of his earlier military
Timing is everything in politics. So it was intriguing to see Wes Streeting – the great hope of Labour moderates – being given prime billing on the morning of Keir Starmer’s big speech. The Health Secretary’s 20-minute address was so perfectly pitched to his audience’s prejudices that you might have thought it had been created
Well, well, well. Angela Rayner may have left the government some weeks ago but the mark she made in one of the highest offices in the country has not been forgotten. A deputy leadership race is rumbling on in the background with both Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell trying to figure out how they can
The Labour party conference has entered one of its final days and as the time ticks on, politicians are finding it a little harder to keep their frustrations to themselves. The mood in Liverpool has felt rather glum as poll after poll suggests that the party of government is becoming even more unpopular despite winning
‘I have never hated someone so much.’ ‘I hope you commit suicide.’ These are just two of the messages I received back in 2020, when I argued that schools should remain open despite the pandemic. Now that the interminable national Covid-19 inquiry is finally getting round to considering the experiences of children, school closures are
To Labour conference, where a number of conversations are being dominated by another political party: Reform UK. New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has had her first few weeks in the job dominated by the small boats crisis and concerns about immigration – announcing yesterday that she will toughen up Labour’s migration policy. But that wasn’t
JK Rowling has broken her silence on Emma Watson. And if I were the Harry Potter actress, I would lie low for a few months. In fact, I would go full hibernation and spend the rest of winter in some far-flung cottage sans internet. For Rowling’s critique of Watson and her lazy, luxury beliefs is
Has the world turned upside-down? Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev, generally known for his toxic social media posts packed with threat and vitriol, is turning down the volume, while various Western public figures are determinedly turning it up. Yesterday, German chancellor Friedrich Merz, in what he called ‘a sentence that may be a little shocking
In a moment of extraordinary geopolitical gravity, US President Donald Trump has unveiled a comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict – a proposal whose ambition, structure, and support represent a seismic shift in Middle Eastern diplomacy. But beneath its layered diplomacy lies a singular, inescapable truth: Trump is making it clear that Hamas must
Say what you like about Donald Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, but his ‘flooding the zone’ thing really works, doesn’t it? Bannon’s thesis about political communication – which is, really, a thesis about political communication as political warfare – is that you need to pump out such a torrent of outrageous and chaotic actions and pronouncements that the press
Britain’s politics has been overrun with populist party leaders in recent years. Nigel Farage has referred to himself as the ‘father of populism’. Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘for the many, not the few’ rhetoric is typical of populists. The new Green party leader, Zack Polanski, was elected on a mandate to turn the Greens into an ‘eco-populist’
A North Korean escapee recently told me about the ‘slavery cards’ he and his fellow countrymen were forced to carry. These cards allowed the state to know everything about you; they could stop you working or walking the streets without fear. They ultimately owned your existence. You can imagine his reaction to Keir Starmer’s new