If Andy Burnham and Louise Haigh really do think Britain’s current problems started because of the Thatcher years, I’m very much afraid he will try to borrow solutions from the past which will not tackle our profound and monumental challenges as a country but make our future a darned sight worse.
Burnham may not realize that this is 2026, and both the underlying problems and the PLP are very different from his Wilsonian and Blairite analogues. Stephen Pollard’s observation that ‘his political body clock stopped when he was last in office’ may prove to be on the money.
Badenoch has gone out of her way to reject any deal with Reform. Her exact words on the possibility are “no, no, no, no, no, no, no”. This really doesn’t look like a mere delaying tactic. Indeed, I’d suggest it’s an integral part of a survival plan for an early general election.
The victory is a sign that if the Conservatives have the intellectual strength to move on from the failures of 2010-2024, they can survive and even thrive.
Nigel Farage was thought the most likely person to be PM after the next election, with 27 per cent naming him but nearly half of all voters said Reform UK were the party they would least like to see in government after the next election.
The UK has the most expensive industrial energy prices in the world. These are gutting our productive capacity in traditional energy-intensive industries, and pose a clear threat to our ability to benefit from the transformational impact of AI.
Government waffle-eeze aside, the principle is a simple one. Coordinating our tools of power will deliver more power and more influence, drive strategic thinking to make the Foreign Office more effective and our undisputed intellectual driver of global engagement.
Taking together the costs that could plausibly be reversed by the state, Onward calculates that 30 per cent of a typical bill is due to policy choices. The Government should be rolling back these imposed costs, starting with the carbon taxes on gas power.
We are the only political party with a properly funded plan to cut bills and axe the Carbon Tax in its entirety – and we’re the only political party that has written the legislation needed to open up the North Sea.
Nobody can predict how long the current Iran oil price spike will last but one thing is certain: future global uncertainty.
Miliband increasingly resembles Don Quixote; the deluded knight from Cervantes’ novel who imagines himself a hero while battling enemies that exist only in his own mind.
In the House of Commons chamber, Sir Keir Starmer seemed not just comfortable with the idea that he is a member of Miliband’s government – he was almost eager to admit it.
The Chancellor should have seized the initiative by declaring that we cannot go on with the public finances in such a parlous condition.
The failed Labour leader, now Energy Secretary, is increasingly tipped as a possible Chancellor in a post–Keir Starmer world. But we may not need to speculate about what he would be like in No11. In many ways, the Miliband chancellorship is already on display.
The attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport show that Saudi Arabia is not a passing regional story, and Britain’s relationship with the Kingdom cannot be managed through short-term reactions. Britain needs a long-term Gulf strategy and the political leadership to deliver it.