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Katy Balls

Reform vs Labour: who’ll win the battle for the north?

When MPs and peers were recalled to parliament for an emergency debate on renationalising British Steel, one man was the talk of the terrace: Nigel Farage. Out by the river, a Labour peer congratulated the Reform leader for ‘leading on everything’. After all, Farage had been in Scunthorpe days earlier calling for steel nationalisation.  Since

Sack the judges

The population of the United Kingdom was increased this week by the arrival of two Albanian lesbians who have been given the right to remain here by an deputy Upper Tribunal judge called Rebecca Chapman. The women insisted that they would face persecution in Albania for their sexual preferences. This is despite the fact that

Why were the Abedis here in the first place?

In recent days parliament has been recalled on a Saturday to debate the renationalisation of the British steel industry. Then, after a month-long strike by binmen in Birmingham, army planners have been called in to help address the issue of large amounts of refuse piling up in the city. Absent a major ideological split on

The biggest threat to Trump is Trump

Although Republicans and Democrats have few things in common, there’s one American universal: we don’t like when you mess with our money. After Donald Trump’s erratic tariff tantrums have sent markets lurching, who knows how much stocks will have spiked or tanked between the typing of this paragraph and it seeing print. Some 62 per

Any other business

No one wants American cars

The weekend’s Scunthorpe drama was a distraction from endless chatter about Donald Trump and his tariffs. Perhaps Downing Street’s spinners stage-managed it with that in mind. Or perhaps the heroic tale of shop stewards confronting villainous Chinese managers while rescue teams scoured the horizon for emergency shipments of iron ore and coking coal was a