You could almost hear the revolutionary vitriol dripping onto the Labour benches during Monday night’s Lords debate on political donations, following the announcement of Reform’s £72 million bonanza from two crypto billionaires with UK voting rights but recent residence abroad. ‘An undermining of democracy and rampant Americanisation’, one peeress spat out. A case of ‘the […]
The verdict is clear. The Right has woken up to the innate statism associated with a statutory Net Zero target. Reform UK reject it outright, and the Conservatives have pledged to scrap the 2050 deadline and the 2008 Climate Change Act by which net-zero targets are enforced. Both accept the approach is a millstone around […]
The last time I wrote about Reform UK’s annual conference I was doing it as the Deputy Editor of this fine publication. A year on, how much has changed? Greeting you as you enter the conference hall is the familiar fare for the familiar fee. Chicken and chips stands sit next to anti-Labour propaganda, accompanied […]
Depending on who you ask, the welfare state is either the only thing left in Britain worth fighting for or a byword for state failure, waste and deceit. A cursory look at the statistics will leave readers under no illusion as to which is the correct interpretation. In the 2025/26 financial year, we are projected […]
At a few minutes past six on Friday morning, in a leisure centre on the Essex coast, the returning officer reached the bottom of a ballot paper roughly a metre long and announced a number that deserves more attention than it is likely to receive. Nigel Farage, 22,239 votes. The commentary had settled into its […]
Zia Yusuf has announced his proposal for a ‘Deliveroo law’ which would make it a criminal offence for CEOs and company directors to use or employ illegal immigrants, i.e., they’d face jail for non-compliance. And if that were not enough to discourage them, 10% of their global turnover could be seized for repeated breaches. Irrespective […]
Clacton is regularly noted as a ‘left behind constituency’, receiving little government support, with few jobs and poor educational attainment. One must only walk down Pier Avenue in the town centre to see the empty shops and occasional homeless person. But to so many in Westminster it has been a constituency of intense political fascination. […]
I was going to open this column by listing the soppy reasons I was a Remainer: the EU represented a model of tolerance, compassion and partnership that would contribute to a more peaceful world; Brexit was revolutionary, therefore unconservative; abandoning our closest trade partnership would harm the economy. These are all perfectly good arguments which […]
The numbers are not in dispute, whatever the spin. Andy Burnham took Makerfield with 54.8% of the vote and a majority of 9,231, on a turnout of 58.7%, the highest at any parliamentary by-election in almost seven years. Labour’s lead over Reform, 13 points at the general election, widened to 20. A seat Reform UK […]
I was in a field in Kent as the local election results came in. As an unapologetic adherent of the metropolitan elite, it’s not my natural environment. But over the weekend it became increasingly clear that I’m not the only Londoner who’s out of touch with the rest of the country. The capital is now […]
We are living through a Tocquevillian moment: ‘The evils which are endured with patience so long as they seem inevitable become intolerable as soon as a hope can be entertained of escaping from them.’ The two-party system appears to be collapsing. The rightward turn seen in the United States may well be repeated in the […]
In leisure centres and town halls across the country, the cheers of the victors can be heard alongside the half-hearted claps of the vanquished. Democracy at its most local – and for the people involved, most personal – is being played out in over 130 English councils, including every borough in London. Few beyond the […]
This week, it was reported that Nigel Farage is backing down on his plan to renationalise half of the water industry and overhaul energy companies as part of Reform UK’s ‘new ownership model for critical national infrastructure’, in which the state and pension funds would own half each. Following Robert Jenrick’s appointment as Reform’s Treasury […]
If the definition of political success is when other people start claiming your ideas as their own, then this week’s speech by Richard Tice committing Reform UK to creating a UK sovereign wealth fund ought to count as a pretty big win. I first proposed the idea in a policy paper more than a decade […]
There is something endearingly ridiculous about Matt Goodwin. The gamekeeper turned poacher of national populism is like the Alan Partridge of political studies: self-important but not self-aware and in a relentless pursuit of self-promotion. He was responsible, during his (very) brief time as a ConservativeHome columnist, for the funniest article that I have ever edited. […]
Monetary policy errors are rarely obvious in real time. More often, they emerge slowly – the product of frameworks that persist beyond the conditions that once justified them. Britain now risks drifting into precisely such a moment. The Bank of England spent the better part of two years extinguishing the most severe inflation shock in […]
In a move intended to signal Reform UK’s maturation from insurgent force to serious contender, Nigel Farage has unveiled the beginnings of his shadow front bench. At the heart of this announcement are three key figures: Farage himself as the guiding force, Robert Jenrick as Shadow Chancellor and Richard Tice retaining his dual role as […]
While the Covid pandemic was a pretty universally horrible experience, one of the few positives to emerge from it was the rise of working from home. For a great many people, no longer having to commute into the office five days a week has been a great boon. However, there are a certain number of […]
Britain’s economic debate rests on a dangerous assumption. Debt crises are things that happen elsewhere. Greece, perhaps. Argentina, certainly. But not the United Kingdom – a mature economy with its own currency, deep capital markets and centuries of institutional credibility. History offers little comfort to countries that think this way. Countries rarely enter fiscal crisis […]
Peering tentatively into 2026, the UK’s business landscape is fraught with uncertainty, but one trend stands out: the remarkable ascent of Reform UK in the eyes of boardrooms. A groundbreaking report from Bradshaw Advisory, where I serve as a senior adviser, polls over 500 business directors and reveals a seismic shift in sentiment. Far from […]
Nigel Farage began 2026 with his usual rhetorical flair, suggesting that Britain might be better off without the Office for Budget Responsibility. Cue the accusations of fiscal irresponsibility. These reactions ignore the fundamental question Farage raises: what has the OBR actually achieved, and does it deserve the weight of authority it now exercises? If we […]
Tackling the national debt, encouraging wealth creation, cracking down on welfare, deregulating the city and wider economy, backing business and bringing down spending. Despite concerns that Reform UK were tacking to the Left on the economy, pro-growth, free market, Thatcherite instincts were in abundance throughout Nigel Farage’s speech today. In almost the final line of […]
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