Over the last few weeks I’ve been travelling up and down the East Coast, visiting places that already have Reform MPs, and places they are targeting in the upcoming local elections. You can find the other pieces below. I’ve saved the most interesting for last: Sunderland. I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a Sunderland … 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
Skegness has always been a place people go to, rather than through. That matters more than it sounds. It sits at the edge of Lincolnshire, facing the North Sea, with no obvious reason for anyone to pass by unless they meant to be there in the first place. It is, in the literal sense, the … Read more
One of the daftest things I read on line is the assertion that “you can’t rewrite history” This, of course, is nonsense, history is rewritten all the time, that is how history works. Each generation writes it’s own history, attitudes change, new facts emerge, documents are found in the archives, things are dug up from … Read more
Great Yarmouth was described by Dickens as a kind of paradise. David Copperfield lived there in an upturned boat with Peggoty. Proof, if it were needed, that the town has not only seen better days, but better centuries. Now it is something else entirely. The archetypal decayed seaside town: slot machines, one-armed bandits, and not … Read more
The 10th anniversary of Brexit is a few months away. Between now and then there are local elections, where Reform—formerly the Brexit Party—hope to make significant gains. I’ve spent the last few weeks travelling up and down England’s east coast, photographing and visiting places where Reform has already won, and places where it hopes to. … Read more
Foreign influence in British politics is no longer theoretical. Last month I wrote about some unusual patterns of political funding flowing into Reform. British electoral law doesn’t allow foreign donations, but Reform appeared to have found a way around this—using UK-registered companies as a kind of front. It turns out I may have been too … Read more
The latest immigration data slipped out last week with surprisingly little noise. It should have been a big political moment. Net migration has fallen to 204,000 in the year to June—less than a third of the previous year’s level. That’s not a marginal shift. That’s a collapse. It’s now so sharp that it risks tipping … Read more
By-elections are supposed to be strange. Low turnout, odd swings, protest votes. But every so often they tell you something real about the direction of travel. This one did. Start with the Greens. On the face of it, good news. They can clearly mobilise a vote and, in the right conditions, win. But their real … Read more
Once upon a time, defining the far right was easy. Britain had fringe parties like the BNP and the National Front. Mainstream politicians kept their distance. Their ideas were toxic, and everyone knew it. That boundary has now broken down. The far right has been partially absorbed into mainstream politics. Just as Jeremy Corbyn opened … Read more