On Friday morning, news broke that one of Britain’s most recognisable political figures, Ann Widdecombe, had died. By mid-day social media was awash with tributes for a woman whose four decades in public life had taken her from Westminster to Brussels, and, most recently, to Reform UK as the party’s spokeswoman on Immigration and Justice. By mid-afternoon, national newspapers had published obituaries, some admiring and others searing in their criticism of a politician who pos

Where just a few months ago Nigel Farage seemed invincible, his political position has grown increasingly precarious in recent months. Nigel Farage’s decision to not declare a £5 million ‘gift’ from the Thailand-based crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne remains the biggest threat to his momentum. The Reform leader claims to have “done nothing wrong”, but his failure to declare the money he received from Harborne, per rule 5 of the House of Commons code of conduct, prompte

It's time to stop thinking about the climate crisis as a problem for the future. If the past week of stifling temperatures in the United Kingdom has shown us anything, it is that global warming is a visceral, present reality. Yet at this very moment, when the effects of climate change are so tangible year on year, political discussion skirts around the issue. Squabbles over North Sea oil have dominated the conversation recently, despite experts having made it clear that arou

It is somewhat rare for an election to proffer signs that are simultaneously encouraging yet brutal for a party in British politics, but the Makerfield by-election proved just that for Reform UK. The result, while confirming that the party has decisively supplanted the Conservatives as the premier force on the British right, nevertheless exposed the possibility that Reform’s rise has itself birthed a coalition capable of stopping it. The encouragement is obvious; Reform amass

Carnage. I think that is the best way to put it. Massive council wins for Reform and an evisceration of Welsh Labour, epitomised by First Minister, Eluned Morgan, being ejected at break-neck speed from her Senedd seat, has rubbed salt into Labour’s backbench anxiety. The threshold for triggering a leadership challenge against the PM, the elusive and seemingly far-fetched 81 MPs, has been surpassed within the space of 48 hours. The only element that’s missing is a leader of th

On the surface Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield is unremarkable, if anything the 20% gap over second-placed Reform is a shining example of how Labour has lost significant swathes of support in the constituencies where historically the Labour vote had to be weighed rather than counted. Makerfield, an ex-mining, working class seat that has voted Labour since 1906 saw 35% of its electorate vote for a right-wing party. The result seemingly represents the phenomenon that has b

I have tended to support left wing parties, gravitating towards their ideas as regional and national politics played a growing part in my teen life. Seeking equality, eliminating poverty, helping the downtrodden and the marginalised, and defeating a self-interested elite have remained leftist constants, but the vehicle of these ideas for me has changed over time. Anarcho-communism was appealing in my early teens, then was Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. While Jeremy was never g

‘We’re living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.’ These were the words of Nigel Farage in an ‘emergency address’ following George Nowak’s tragic killing in Southampton. It is rather rare to hear the Reform UK leader speak directly about race. He would feel much more comfortable ranting about illegal migration or asylum seekers. Farage appears especially keen to weaponise this mome

Reform UK’s burgeoning popularity has never stemmed from policy alone. A central pillar of its appeal has long rested in the promise of purification; an anti-establishment, anti-corruption party supposedly untainted by the deceitful Westminster habits that have set Labour and the Conservatives hurtling towards electoral devastation come 2029. If polls are to be believed, this gambit will reap lucrative electoral dividends for Nigel Farage’s latest insurgency project. But the

Reform UK has been bolstered over the past few years by a media sullied by millionaires selling easy answers to the less politically focused populace. This malaise has been growing in the background for many years, however, with reports of Elon Musk considering funding Reform UK, it could be a saga reaching its climax. My gripe is not just with Reform over this campaign, but also with the left-wing parties of Your Party (Jeremy Corbyn’s new home), and The Green Party. Through

As the May Local Elections approach, things look bleak for the political centre. Polling suggests Labour could lose close to 2,000 local councillors, while the Conservatives are predicted to lose around 1,000. The big winners will likely be Reform, who could gain over 2,000 councillors - with the Greens also expected to perform well, potentially gaining close to 500. There is, of course, good reason to be fed up with Keir Starmer and his government, particularly in the light

Politics have become quite boring today. This is not to say that the news is uneventful – five minutes of doomscrolling will quickly put paid to that idea. And the humanitarian cost of it all is mounting rapidly in a crescendo that should alarm us all. But for the most part the politics in the West today continues to conform to a number of routines and rituals that contain little new within them; they are ripples from stones already dropped into the pond. We can see this in

The epithet “they are all as bad as each other” has increasingly become a mantra up and down the country, much to the dismay of canvassers and candidates alike. Green, Tory, Labour, and Reform voters may individually have starkly disparate grievances, but most seem to feel that politics and politicians don’t seem to work for them. If one word were to sum up the national mood, it would undoubtedly be apathy. It is apathy that has led both major political parties to reach their

Earlier this month, Robert Jenrick was abruptly sacked by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch after screenshots of the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice’s resignation speech were sent to senior figures in Badenoch’s office. Memories of the infighting that characterised the latter years of the previous Conservative government were immediately evoked, a period in which Tory MPs routinely plotted against their leaders, forgetting their duties to the public to instead resemble

Over the weekend, Keir Starmer had to once again confront a problem in the shape of Andy Burnham . The issue was not really a new one for Starmer. In fact, by this point, talk of Andy Burnham angling for a seat in Parliament to challenge the Prime Minister has become a kind of political groundhog day. What was new this time was the fact that the problem before Starmer was no longer a hypothetical one, and Andy Burnham was - after months of speculation - attempting to make a

Ahead of the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary elections, Frederick Graham examines eighteen years of Scottish Nationalist rule and the state of Scottish politics. In Westminster and Europe, recent election cycles have revealed an increasingly consistent pattern: governing parties have become exposed to sharp electoral punishment. This trend has cut across ideologies. After four years the centre-left “traffic-light” German coalition was decisively punished at the ballot box. Acros

Whilst the Labour Government is being hounded from outside and torn apart from inside, the Tories, who should surely be revelling in such red dismay, are largely excluded from the debate; all heads are turning, whether it’s mainstream media or twitter bubbles, to what Reform have to say. Farage has been bullying the Tories for longer than I can remember, but this is the first time that he and his party of charlatans is squatting in the centre-right voter base that the Tories

Steamrolling towards the 2010 General Election, and needing to recoup votes lost to David Cameron’s Conservatives and ‘ Cleggmania ’, Prime Minister Gordon Brown headed to Rochdale to engage with Joe Public. Unfortunately for him, it all ended up going awry, as Brown ended up committing a political gaffe of the ages following his televised conversation with 66-year-old Gillian Duffy. The exchange touched on pensions, university tuition, and immigration, as well as other topi

Since Labour reclaimed power last summer, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has borne the brunt of much of the criticism directed towards the government. The decisions to scrap winter fuel payments and inheritance tax exemptions on farms struck deep; this was an electorate unprepared for such change and a media that underestimated the UK’s first female occupant of the role being so combative right from the onset. This front-footedness prompted a swift response. Hacks bayed

Occasionally, you stumble across something that perfectly articulates the current zeitgeist. Recently, Tim Stanley on the Daily T podcast explained that Farage and Reform are neither a right-wing nor left-wing party; they are a nationalist outfit. Essentially meaning that on some issues the party tacks left, on others they sway right. Fundamentally opportunist, everything is underpinned by the idea and sense, whether factual or not, that decisions are made for your, the Bri