Clearly this was a big night for Reform, a bad night for Labour, and a mixed night for everyone else. Labour lost seats to the Greens, to a lesser extent Reform, and to Plaid Cymru and the SNP. The Conservatives lost seats heavily to Reform. But for the Government to lose seats at this point … Read more
Kent is one of Reform’s flagship councils. With the local elections coming up I wanted to talk about areas where Refrom control the local authority and their track record. Kent County Council governs one of the largest populations of any local authority in England. It sits at the top of a two-tier system — county, … Read more
I was working in Leeds when I first started seeing adverts for WKD. Billboards, TV spots—loud, garish, and oddly confrontational. They didn’t look like advertising as we understood it. Traditionally, advertising sold aspiration. Buy this and you’ll be better, cooler, more successful—more attractive, even. WKD did the opposite. Its campaign—“Have you got a WKD side?”—didn’t … Read more
Last week, Nigel Farage announced that a future Reform government would ban working from home. If that sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve heard it before. Boris Johnson floated the same idea four years ago. Same rhetoric. Same applause lines. Same fatal flaw. Reform supporters bristle when critics describe the party as a retirement home for … Read more
Reform UK has received a record £9 million donation from cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne — the largest single donation ever made by a living person to a British political party. Harborne, who is based in Thailand and also known as Chakrit Sakunkrit, is not new to UK political funding. He previously donated substantial sums to … Read more
One of the defining principles of old-school Conservatives in the UK and the US was “sound money”: maintaining the value of the currency, keeping inflation in check, and controlling the money supply. Under Thatcher, this was elevated into the main tool of economic policy—with disastrous consequences. Modern right-wingers on both sides of the Atlantic have … Read more
All summer long the press — along with a depressing number of commentators and politicians — warned of a “summer of violence,” supposedly echoing last year’s riots in British cities. At times their warnings felt less like reporting and more like an attempt to foment unrest themselves, an embrace of mob politics. The reality fell … Read more
Farage’s Authoritarian Dream Nigel Farage has unveiled another round of “policy announcements” — less a manifesto, more a vision for a whiter, more conformist Britain. Meanwhile, the Government appears asleep at the wheel, or perhaps snoozing on a deckchair. Angela Rayner provokes tabloid paroxysms by vaping in a dinghy or drinking rosé in a dry … Read more
From QAnon to Rotherham: Why the Establishment Always Looks the Other Way The US and UK right are in a strange and sordid mess when it comes to child sexual abuse. In Britain, the very people who fume about asylum seekers living near schools—in case they might be paedophiles—are now outraged about new online safety … Read more
I grew up in close-knit former mining villages in East Durham—places not unlike Seaham, a town I know well. For years, I was a regular at the Seaham Food Festival, which takes place again this weekend. Where I’m from, solidarity mattered. People stuck together and looked out for each other. These were the kinds of … Read more