Fraser Nelson is a Daily Telegraph columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
14 min listen
The election campaign was going well for Nigel Farage’s Reform… until it wasn’t. A series of controversies have been difficult for the party to shake off. Will the distractions cost them votes and MPs? How will it affect their momentum – and who’s to blame? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Heale.
58 min listen
Join Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls and Kate Andrews for this special edition of Coffee House Shots, recorded live ahead of the general election. As election day draws closer, Fraser talks through some myth-busting statistics and the team answer questions from the audience. Could this election increase support for proportional representation? What policy does the panel
13 min listen
The Democrats wanted and needed a compelling performance from Joe Biden last night: a rebuttal to the concerns about his age and ability. Instead, his performance was disastrous. Is there any way he can survive this performance? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Sarah Elliott, director of the UK-US special relationship unit at the
The Democrats wanted and needed a compelling performance from Joe Biden last night: a rebuttal to the concerns about his age and ability. Instead, his performance was disastrous. His voice was hoarse, he rambled, frequently lost his chain of thought and sometimes couldn’t even get to the end of his sentences. Donald Trump was composed
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This week: Downfall. Our cover piece examines Nigel Farage’s role in the UK general election. Spectator editor Fraser Nelson argues that Farage has become the left’s greatest weapon, but why? How has becoming leader of Reform UK impacted the campaign and could this lead to a fundamental realignment of British politics? Fraser joined the podcast to talk
Nigel Farage is about to turn British politics upside-down for a third time. His Ukip insurgency forced the Tories to offer the 2016 referendum on the EU and changed history. When his Brexit party pushed Tories into fifth place in our last-ever European parliament elections in 2019, his victory established him as the most effective
12 min listen
In a speech this afternoon, Nigel Farage doubled down on controversial comments he made about the West provoking the war in Ukraine. Is the Reform leader taking inspiration from Trump? And could this be a small win for the Tories who are seeking to claw back Reform votes? Also on the podcast, James Heale speaks
‘Handouts from the state do not nurture the same sense of self-reliant dignity as a fair wage,’ says Keir Starmer in an article for the Sunday Telegraph. He’s right. Being in work is the most effective bulwark against poverty. Yet time and time again, government fairness is judged in terms of how it tweaks benefits rather than
When Robert Winnett was named the new editor of the Washington Post, it made a lot of sense to me. He’s deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph, perhaps best known for being the driving force behind the MPs’ expenses investigation. His judgment and energy have been pivotal to making the Telegraph such a strong commercial
12 min listen
If you’re a Twitter user, you might have seen more of Boris Johnson than usual. He’s been making videos to endorse selected candidates from his holiday in Sardinia. Might he make a bigger return to the election campaign? Is he the man that could save the Tories from Farage – and does he want to?
10 min listen
Nigel Farage has unveiled Reform UK’s manifesto. Except, it’s not a manifesto, because he says the word is synonymous in voters’ minds with ‘lies’. It promises a freeze on non-essential immigration, a patriotic curriculum, leaving the European Court on Human Rights, and cutting taxes by £88 billion. Is this contract more of a wish list?
Perhaps Keir Starmer’s only solid election pledge is to use the money from VAT on private school fees to ‘hire 6,500 more teachers’ over five years. But how solid is this pledge? And what’s the context? There are 530,000 teachers, so if the 6,500 were to be hired tomorrow, it would increase the headcount by
19 min listen
Picture the scene: it’s July 5th and a triumphant Keir Starmer arrives at Downing Street after achieving a supermajority and the Tories have only narrowly prevented the Lib Dems becoming official party of opposition. Whilst this may sound far fetched, it is the likely result when you take an average of the last week’s polls.
12 min listen
Grant Shapps has been speaking to media this morning and warning that a Labour landslide would be ‘very bad news’ for the country. Is the acknowledgement that Labour could seriously damage the Tories a slip of the tongue, or a new strategy for the Tories? Elsewhere, the interview that Rishi Sunak left D Day commemorations
‘The rise of nationalists and demagogues is a danger for our nation but also for Europe,’ said Emmanuel Macron as he announced his general election. Strong talk, as befits his newly-called general election campaign but is that really what has just happened? Look closely and the results are more nuanced – and more interesting. If
12 min listen
Last night, leaders and senior representatives from seven political parties went head to head in the latest TV debate. But who came out on top? Katy Balls speaks to James Heale and Fraser Nelson.
I’d say that Nigel Farage gave the best performance in last night’s debate. You might expect that: he’s a full-time television host, so he talks politics to cameras for a living. But of the seven that were on stage, he’s also the most experienced street fighter. He knew how to use humour and had a
It didn’t take long for Nigel Farage to weaponise Sunak’s D-Day debacle. ‘Rishi Sunak pops into Normandy but omits to go to the big international commemoration,’ he says in a pre-debate warmup video. ‘He doesn’t really care about our history. He doesn’t really care, frankly, about our culture…This man is not patriotic. Doesn’t believe in
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
‘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
