Politics
The attack on Young Bob is part of an alarming trend
In recent years, young people have become increasingly vocal about what they perceive to be profound injustices in society. Many of us are familiar with scenes of blue-haired trans activists, Black Lives Matter campaigners, pro-Palestinian demonstrators and climate activists – whether at universities or on social media – demanding to be heard at the top of their voices.
Increasingly, these activists aren’t content with howling down their opponents. They are also resorting to violence. We have seen this yet again with the brutal assault on right-wing activist Gregory Moffitt – known online as ‘Young Bob’ – on the streets of Manchester this week.
Young Bob – the self-declared ‘Christian pro-life remigration activist’ – was attacked on Market Street on Monday afternoon, repeatedly kicked and punched until he fell to the ground. The footage is shocking. Three of the alleged perpetrators have been arrested and bailed.
Young Bob had been hosting a debate stand wearing a Restore Britain cap, seated at a table bearing a sign that read: ‘Reform must be more radical. Change my mind.’ It was a nod to the motto of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk who was murdered while speaking at Utah Valley University last year.
Fortunately, Young Bob has recovered – an opportunity not given to Kirk. But the next victim may not be so lucky. Political violence is rising – and, increasingly, it is ‘progressives’ who are responsible for it.
Even before his assault, Young Bob was no stranger to cancel culture. Last month, while hosting a debate at the University of Bristol, as part of his ‘Change My Mind’ tour, he had a tub of curry thrown at him by a disgruntled student.
This exposes the intolerance of those who refuse to engage in open debate. And we must be under no illusions as to where this intolerance leads.
A further incident unfolded when Young Bob visited the London School of Economics last year, at the invitation of the university’s Conservative Association, to speak about the importance of social conservatism in Britain today.
He recounted that attendees were initially engaged – asking questions and taking pictures – until masked protesters barged in, seized materials and used megaphones to drown out the discussion. A classic case of the heckler’s veto.
The ability to debate in good faith has deteriorated sharply in recent years, as cancel culture has embedded itself across university campuses. Students and academics alike have faced abuse, harassment and ostracism for expressing perfectly lawful views.
What happened to Young Bob in Manchester is part of a wider pattern. Intolerance on university campuses is a breeding ground for political violence – a truth underscored, at far greater cost, by the assassination of Kirk.
Last year, a poll by Looking for Growth and Merlin Strategy found that seven in 10 people are concerned about political violence. Worryingly, one in five believe it’s acceptable under some circumstances.
Charlie Kirk’s warning that ‘when people stop talking, that’s when you get violence’ has never felt more apt. Britain is more divided than it has been in a long time. It is no coincidence that this has coincided with a free-speech crisis – most acute in higher education.
It’s time to call out cancel culture for what it is. It’s nothing to do with ‘being kind’. It’s about suppressing speech by any means necessary – including violence.
Max Thompson is the campaigns officer at the Free Speech Union.
Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, May 2026 (PA Images / Alamy)
5 min read
Both Labour and the Conservatives face existential challenges. Their hangups, obsessions and pathologies help explain why.
Though embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised “change”, recent events are probably not what he had in mind. With the victory of Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election, we face the prospect of a seventh prime minister in 10 years.
We know that British political volatility is partly the result of deeper currents. Across Europe, the grand old parties of right and left cede ground to upstart rivals. In the UK, the tectonic plates of politics have been grinding away at the two-party dominance of Conservatives and Labour for decades. In the last 20 years, we have seen the resultant volcanic eruptions: SNP and Plaid Cymru governments, Brexit, and surges for Reform and the Green Party.
We also know, though, that it takes a lot for either of the two main parties to be replaced in Britain, due not least to the voting system. It is nonetheless a live possibility today because of the bungled responses of the Tories and Labour to these challenges.
Why have they got it so wrong? To misquote Tolstoy, each unhappy political party is unhappy in its own way.
Labour’s problem is that long-term changes in its voting base now sit very awkwardly with its sense of collective identity. The party’s activist and elected official class cling to an entrenched historical mythology of Labour as the political wing of the industrial working class. As the Instagram of Al Carns MP recently declared: “Labour was chiselled out of the mines, hammered out of the shipyards, forged in the factories.”
In their heart of hearts, therefore, many Labour figures would prefer a different electorate to the one they have. “We are in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people,” Angela Rayner recently warned. She’s right to worry: both Reform and the Greens are performing more strongly among economically insecure voters than Labour. Crucially, however, the relatively poor of Britain are not homogenous.
Because of this hangup, Labour has reacted to the loss of voters in post-industrial towns by trying to fend off the Reform challenge. These were ‘hero voters’ for Labour strategists in the 2024 election, an attitude that helps us understand the party’s authoritarian turn on immigration in office. The problem, as political scientists have been screaming at Labour for some time, is that these electors have not voted Labour for ages, if ever in many cases, and showed no evidence (even in 2024) of turning to the party in large numbers.
Meanwhile, and predictably, the upshot of Starmer’s hero voter strategy has been a huge loss of liberal-leaning voters in the left bloc – including, crucially, economically precarious workers in the cities – to the Greens. The solution is not as simple as ‘pivot left’: voters are not that coherent. Still, Labour’s internal political culture suffers from hangovers about who the party is ‘of’ as well as ‘for’, and these have prevented a clear analysis of viable electoral strategies.
To misquote Tolstoy, each unhappy political party is unhappy in its own way
The Conservatives have their own fetishes from their past. A certain handbag-wielding prime minister looms large. But theirs are quite different. If Labour is the party that struggles with power, the Conservatives were, at least historically, the party of statecraft par excellence. Power, above all, is key for the Tories, and flexibility to obtain power is no bad thing.
The problem, however, is that this strong will to power, when not checked by other impulses, can prove destructive in the long run. Since the 2010s, the Conservatives have pursued Brexit, much lower immigration and culture war politics with increasing vigour. This was partly due to internal party management issues, but also clearly an attempt to retain power by seeing off the threat from Nigel Farage’s Ukip.
This instinct led to several successful elections, particularly 2015 and 2019. But the choices made in the process (a referendum on EU membership, a hard Brexit) have also gradually alienated large parts of the Conservatives’ electorate: the English middle classes.
The Conservatives in the 20th century drew support from a patchwork of social groups, from backwoodsmen to industrialists. The cliché may have been that the Anglican Church was the Tory party at prayer, but Thatcher’s Chancellor Geoffrey Howe used to quip that the Tories were the National Farmers’ Union at prayer.
Still, it was heavily dependent on clerks, senior civil servants, and the traditional professions. It is therefore surprising just how unconcerned Kemi Badenoch’s party appears to be about its catastrophic losses of the comfortable, southern English middle-classes. In the local elections, Richmond-upon-Thames became a one-party state for the Liberal Democrats, the most dramatic example of the risks of adopting short-term tactics that harm long-term political health.
Both parties, then, have distinct pathologies that have hindered their ability to navigate the treacherous ground of fragmented British politics. But there is one failing that they share: quality of government. Liz Truss was only the extreme example of a wider trend. In the decade since the Brexit referendum, the UK has not only cycled between prime ministers but also supposedly era-defining agendas (‘Levelling Up’, ‘Change’) that were manifestly incoherent and collapsed under pressure. Perhaps relatedly, the quality of legislative scrutiny in parliament appears to have declined.
Post-2008 stagnation, the shocks of the pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are the dominant explanations for the wicked policy challenges facing UK politics. But here, too, the once-dominant parties of Britain might want to look in the mirror.
Dr Colm Murphy is a senior lecturer in British politics at Queen Mary University of London
This really is the most extraordinary statement.
The short version is “We’re going to keep breaking the law every day while we think about whether we want it to apply to us or not”.
And the really depressing thing is that that’s very much par for the course in the world of the Scottish establishment. We already knew that if you’re powerful and/or rich, you can publicly admit a crime and the police and Crown Office will just look the other way.
We knew that the aforementioned Crown Office can preside over a malicious prosecution costing the country tens of millions of pounds and absolutely nobody will face any consequences for it, with those responsible simply carrying on until they walk off into retirement.
We knew that the head of the Crown Office can be found to have maliciously prosecuted someone, yet that person can have no legal redress whatsoever under the Scottish judicial system – a state of affairs which openly breaches European human rights law – and rather than accept a judge’s ruling and fix the law so that the Lord Advocate is no longer above it, the Scottish Government will appeal it to a friendlier judge so that Scotland can remain in breach of European law and justice can be denied.
We knew that the head of the Civil Service can conduct a grotesquely crooked and unfair persecution against an innocent man and not only face no sanctions but have her contract extended.
We knew that those well-connected to the Scottish Government can commit even the most flagrant level of demonstrable, indisputable perjury in a serious criminal trial and see the matter quietly kicked into the long grass indefinitely, even though there is only a single fact to investigate, and it’s already known what the truth of that fact is because it was established in open court.
And we’ve known for many years now that none of this can be challenged because the Crown Office is legally answerable to no-one and its head can simply do whatever the hell he or she likes, because even if they hacked the First Minister to death with an axe live on national television, all anyone could do would be report it to the police who would then pass on the decision about whether to prosecute to… the Crown Office.
But even knowing all THAT, there’s something breathtaking about the Scottish Prison Service being the subject of an excoriating, unequivocal judgment that it is breaking the law, and then breezily announcing that “Sure, judge, like that’s YOUR opinion or whatever, but to be quite frank we’re just going to carry on doing the unlawful thing for as long as we want because who’s gonna stop us? The government? LOLZ! The whole thing was their idea!”
And why wouldn’t they? The Scottish Government has after all spent years, vast amounts of legislative energy and millions and millions of pounds on its policy of putting male rapists in women’s prisons. It’s clearly still committed to that policy, since it fought this case, despite the fact that it was blindingly obvious in the wake of the Supreme Court judgment that it would lose – yet again – to For Women Scotland, who it continues to refuse even the basic courtesy of a discussion despite pledging to do so more than a year and a quarter ago.
Meanwhile it continues to hurl large sums of public money at organisations who spend that money on openly urging people and organisations to break the same law that the Scottish Prison Service has just been found in breach of.
So what are the chances that it’s going to call in the Scottish Prison Service and say “Look, we’ve had a lot of fun but you should probably do what the Supreme Court says now”?
That’s a rhetorical question, obviously.
Our country has been stolen by arrogant gangsters and there appears to be nothing we can do about it.
Our courts are a blunt knife. They’ve got all the guns AND all the badges.
The news that Andy Burnham would stand as the MP for Makerfield was received with some surprise. In the throes of Labour’s May 2026 crisis, following the disastrous local and devolved parliament elections, commentators questioned his choice of constituency.
Burnham’s ambition, of course, was never in doubt – nor was the national executive committee’s rapid capitulation. The Greater Manchester mayor was blocked ahead of the February 2026 Gorton and Denton by-election on the grounds that his selection would unleash a new wave of Westminster psychodrama. At the second time of asking, Starmer’s resistance – and his political capital – was spent.
But the circumstances that delivered Burnham’s Makerfield vacancy invited scrutiny. It was Josh Simons, the former director of Labour Together, who sailed to the rescue of Labour’s prince across the water. Simons’ abdication could well be rewarded with a central position in the Burnham court.
The second curiosity concerned the character of the Makerfield constituency. Simons’ 5,399-vote majority was the fifth lowest of the 27 Greater Manchester constituencies in 2024. The seat also carried a significant Reform presence. The party’s 2024 candidate, Robert Kenyon, polled 12,803 votes (31.8%), finishing second. Some two years later, in the weeks before Simons’ resignation, Reform secured 24 out of the 25 seats up for grabs on Wigan Borough Council.
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In truth, it was necessity – as opposed to calculation and strategy – that carved Burnham’s path to power. He was left with limited options as Greater Manchester Labour MPs successively ruled out imposing a by-election on their constituents. Political circumstance conspired to produce a proof-of-concept contest for the man many cast as Labour’s antidote to Reform.
Burnham’s victory this week was remarkable on two counts therefore: for its margin – a majority of 9,231 with 54.8% of the vote – and for its narrative power.
Burnham’s campaign in Makerfield was constructed around a series of familiar rallying cries. But it was their convergence on a single candidate that defined the by-election’s novel nature. Burnham was simultaneously the “change” candidate, the “stop Reform” candidate and the “Get Starmer out” candidate. This same succession of slogans powered the Green Party’s victory in Gorton and Denton. But in Makerfield, they formed the rhetorical reserve of the candidate with the red rosette – in a historically Labour-voting constituency.
Not every slogan was featured on Burnham’s “For Us” literature. But there could be no mistaking the subtext of Burnham’s “bring change to Westminster” message. In Makerfield, the electorate endorsed Burnham and the central, irresistible implication of his candidacy: regicide.
Against this backdrop, Burnham’s landslide conforms to recent electoral trends. Voters want change and do not expect Starmer to deliver it. Makerfield represented another opportunity for voters to send a version of the same message they have sent to Westminster for some years now.
For weeks, Makerfield was styled as a stepping stone on Burnham’s path to power. But Burnham’s campaign would be mistaken to see itself as the driver of events. Voters used him to send a message to Westminster – not the other way round.
Burnham still has considerable cause for optimism this weekend. Reform’s limited pool of candidates is continuing to cause problems; Robert Kenyon marked the party’s second candidate blunder in as many by-elections. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, appears increasingly uneasy in the role of permanent political actor; the prospect of becoming prime minister is weighing on British politics’ perennial outsider. Over the coming months, his fragmenting right flank will pose a series of tricky purity tests that risk pulling Reform’s centre of gravity further from the median voter.
Burnham will now reap the political spoils of his Makerfield conquest. His immediate achievement lies in injecting a popular element into what had hitherto been an elite-dominated power struggle. Burnham was endorsed as his party’s saviour in a Reform target seat by voters Labour must win to survive as a national force. A great deal was left unsaid during the campaign. But Burnham’s implicit message to Labour MPs was simple: if I can win Makerfield, I can win the country.
Politicians, of whatever rank or party affiliation, trade in stories. The original sin of the Starmer premiership was its almost dogmatic aversion to narrative. Burnham’s victory simultaneously strikes the heart of the story Starmer told Labour MPs in opposition: that ideological self-flagellation was a condition of victory. Burnham’s message is that Labour can be truer to its historic instincts (more left-wing) and still win the country.
Today, in the wake of Makerfield, Burnham’s principal problem is that all which was left unsaid during the campaign must now be articulated.
The mythical power of the prince across the water is derived from their perfect isolation. Burnham’s relative detachment in recent years has obscured his political outline. As such, leading figures from every Labour faction have projected their political aspirations onto the Greater Manchester mayor. Burnham’s power base is found among the soft left, and his emerging leadership operation is staffed by figures drawn from the upper reaches of the relaunched Tribune Group. But elements of the traditional Labour right, the Socialist Campaign Group, Blue Labour and the Red Wall Caucus have all found common cause with Burnham in recent months.
The rival claims on Burnham were thrown into sharp relief in the early hours of Friday morning. Both Josh Simons and John McDonnell celebrated when the returning officer declared Burnham’s victory. The former was situated by Burnham’s side at the Makerfield count; the latter shed a tear live on LBC Radio.
Labour MPs’ conceptions of what Andy Burnham means, politically, will now be pitted against each other. Every faction that rallied to Burnham’s ambiguous standard will want to see itself represented, ideologically at least, in the settlement that follows.
The extent to which Burnham’s factional coalition is a marriage of convenience – or of delusion – will soon be revealed.
The big strategic dilemma facing camp Burnham is whether they choose to define their man before or after challenging Starmer. The route of least resistance would be to land in Westminster on Monday with the roster of 81 regicides required under Labour’s leadership rules. A contest would begin in earnest, and Starmer and Wes Streeting could melt away. But this approach would store up problems for Burnham in Downing Street.
There is also the matter of unseating Starmer, whose public pronouncements indicate a stubborn resolution to remain in power. The prime minister is protected by Labour’s strict leadership election procedures, which do not provide for a simple “no-confidence” motion, and he senses that subjecting Labour’s saviour to finer scrutiny could see some of the sheen come off.
In any case, it is time for Labour MPs to reconcile themselves to the consequences of their rebellion and Burnham’s Makerfield victory. The demand for an “orderly” succession will soon reveal its oxymoronic character. There is no such thing as a bloodless coup in British politics. Even if a contest is avoided, Burnham will need to succeed where previous prime ministers have failed in constructing a sense of political order from the rubble of regicide.
If the real meaning of Makerfield lay in the campaign subtext, its fallout will be defined by the clarity Burnham can no longer defer.
And if he does not deliver, if chaos reigns, Labour’s latest MP will learn that the public’s patience is perilously thin.
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Following his resounding victory in the Makerfield by-election, former New Labour hack Andy Burnham is set to return to Westminster next week. Unless something remarkable happens, this will be the prelude to the former Greater Manchester mayor assuming leadership of the Labour Party and becoming our next prime minister. The only question, it seems, is whether Our Andy will be allowed into No10 as part of an ‘orderly transition’, with the current incumbent, Keir Starmer, being forced to step aside, or be made to enter a leadership contest against the wildly unpopular Starmer, Wes Streeting and an assortment of non-entities we’d all struggle to pick out of a line-up. Either way, all roads point to a Burnham premiership in the very near future.
Labourites and their party’s legion media cheerleaders seem delighted at the prospect. ‘He has delivered hope’, says one Labour old hand. Another has written of the ‘excited anticipation’ leaving the red side of the Commons positively tumescent. Across the board, they all seem gripped by the same delusion – that Labour’s plummeting popularity is all down to the supernaturally unpopular Starmer. Their thinking runs something like this: get rid of the weird robotic man at the top, and replace him with Andy ‘average bloke’ Burnham, and, just like that, Labour will be able to reverse its slide. A normal pre-Reform UK state of affairs will resume. Status quo Andy.
This is desperately wishful thinking. Labour doesn’t have a Keir Starmer problem. It has a Labour problem. It is organisationally and ideologically estranged from its working-class support base. Labour today is a deracinated, hollowed-out vehicle for the professional managerial class. The only politicians it can produce are different brands of the same technocratic, managerial product.
Burnham is a case in point. There is nothing to suggest that his premiership will differ markedly from what has gone before. An Oxbridge-educated, political-class protege of the Tony Blair years, Burnham cleaves to the same globalist, technocratic worldview as his soon-to-be predecessor. He favours expertise and rules over democratic decision-making, ‘progressive’ and transnational governance over national sovereignty. He may be famous for changing his mind, but his countless u-turns take place within a political-class project heading one way.
Hence, he is openly pro-EU, and told the Guardian last September he wanted Britain to rejoin – although, like Starmer, he has since said he’s not going to formally push that as policy this parliamentary term.
It’s the same story on the economy. Having briefly flirted with challenging the government’s ‘fiscal rules’, he has now pledged his fealty to those self-same rules. He’s even announced he is ‘not squeamish’ about tackling the UK’s huge welfare bill in order to bring spending down to within the permitted levels. Although, like Starmer and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, Burnham may find Labour backbenchers, whose welfarism is the closest thing they have to a cause, just as resistant to reforming the benefits system.
And, of course, he remains committed to Net Zero, that grandest of technocratic causes. Indeed, it’s worth noting that one of his key Labour allies is Ed Miliband, the climate-change secretary and Net Zero zealot. Some even expect Miliband to be appointed Burnham’s chancellor.
Like all good members of the modern political class, Burnham is also broadly ‘progressive’ in outlook. Which means he’s likely to continue with Starmer’s clumsy culture-warring tendencies and unthinking embrace of ‘woke’ – ‘I call it respect for other people and basic decency’, as he put it to Byline Times last year. He’s even set to follow in Starmer’s footsteps on transgenderism. While he’s never proclaimed that ‘99.9 per cent of women haven’t got a penis’, he certainly seems to struggle with the biological reality of sex, as he demonstrated in an agonising interview with LBC last year. He’s even come out in support of allowing men to access women’s toilets.
Those building Burnham up as Labour’s Great Red Hope point to his vague talk of taking ‘public control’ of water and energy companies, and the ‘municipal socialism’ of his Manchester mayorality, as proof that he really will be different to what has gone before. But it’s all smoke and mirrors. ‘Public control’ is very different to public ownership. At most, Burnham might attempt to do to water or energy companies what he did to Manchester’s bus network, taking disparate still-private-sector companies under a public umbrella. As Fraser Myers has pointed out, this is more Transport for London than ‘the common ownership of the means of production’. It is a species of managerialism, not socialism.
Just about the only area in which a Burnham premiership might diverge from a Starmer one is immigration. In mid-May, he did appear to back ex-deputy PM Angela Rayner’s criticism of home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plans to curb immigration as ‘un-British’ – especially the plan to extend the period after which migrants can apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK from five to 10 years. Even so, just days later, the Guardian reported that Burnham intends to back Mahmood’s plans. This really just shows how spongy Burnham’s day-to-day politics is, absorbing whatever is closest to him at any given moment. An ally called him a ‘people pleaser’. In that regard, at least, he is very different to Starmer – a man with a talent for inspiring near universal dislike.
In almost every area, Burnham promises more of the same. The same no-growth economics, further strangled by immiserating Net Zero policies. The same surreptitious re-embrace of the EU. And the same culture-warring ‘progressivism’. There will be plenty of flip-flopping on particular policies and specific statements. But this will all take place within the broad technocratic, ‘progressive’ consensus of the political class.
Burnham promises to be just as visionless as predecessor. Just as incapable of rising to the profound challenges of our moment. If Starmer is an empty suit, Burnham is an empty Paul Smith knit. He’s a friendlier, smart-casual upgrade on the adenoidal chatbot currently squatting in No10. But in substance, he’s of the same political-class stock. He offers nothing.
Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.
6 min read
Andy Burnham’s comfortable victory in the Makerfield by-election has raised further questions about whether Nigel Farage can become prime minister in the face of anti-Reform UK tactical voting.
Makerfield was not only a Reform target seat, but a constituency where the party enjoyed its sixth-highest vote share in the 2024 general election.
In the run-up to polling day, some opinion polls pointed to a close contest between Labour candidate Burnham and his Reform rival Robert Kenyon.
In the end, however, the former health secretary cruised to victory in the Makerfield by-election, winning over 50 per cent of the vote, 20 per cent ahead of second-place Kenyon.
Farage himself admitted that he did not see Burnham’s “emphatic, dramatic” win coming.
Burnham, who is now expected to replace Keir Starmer in No 10, not only finished way ahead of Reform, but won more votes than all other candidates combined.
The aggregate vote for the parties of the right and the aggregate votes for the left stayed roughly the same in Makerfield compared to the 2024 general election, and yet Labour was able to increase its majority by nearly 10 per cent.
Reform’s vote share increased by nearly three per cent. Meanwhile, the Green vote in the seat fell by around four per cent compared to two years ago, the Lib Dems fell by six per cent, and the Conservative support collapsed by nearly nine per cent.
These changes suggest that significant numbers of people who previously voted for the Green Party and the Lib Dems this time voted Labour – either to keep Reform out, or to secure a victory for Burnham in order to potentially oust Starmer as prime minister.
Commentator and former president of YouGov Peter Kellner has argued that if Reform is to win a majority at the next general election, it needs to win seats like Makerfield by a mile – but the results show that seat-by-seat tactical voting could “cost Reform dear”.
Reform already fell short of winning the Caerphilly Senedd by-election to Plaid Cymru and the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election to the Green Party, largely because anti-Reform voters coalesced around Plaid and the Greens respectively in each contest to prevent Reform winning.
Kellner told PoliticsHome that these three by-elections show that tactical voting will be absolutely crucial for the next general election.
He explained that up to now, Reform has been unable to unite voters on the right in the way that parties of the left have managed in recent contests.
In Makerfield, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain won 7 per cent of the vote – a level of support that could cost Farage in more closely fought seats.
“The Tory vote didn’t collapse quite as much as the Liberal-Green vote, but the Tories went down, and Restore intervened, so you’ve got a sort of complicated thing on the right,” Kellner said.
“But the net effect was that whereas tactical voting enabled Labour to come very, very close to monopolising the ‘progressive’ votes, Reform was completely unable to monopolise anything like the same extent those on the right.”
He said at a general election level, when you expand the concept of tactical voting to 650 constituencies, the winning party will be the one which is most successful in monopolising their left or right bloc.
Sophie Stowers, research manager at pollster More in Common, said that while tactical voting played a part in Makerfield, it was only “part of the story”.
She explained that even if 2024 Green and Lib Dem voters hadn’t switched to Burnham as the results suggest, he still would have won more votes than Reform and Restore Britain put together. “It is maybe more to do with Andy Burnham being able to unite that left flank, more so than [voters] consciously mobilising against Reform,” she said.
“Clearly, there was a failure to coordinate on the right, but Restore mobilised different kinds of voters as well – they probably got some people to turn out who wouldn’t have even turned out to vote for Reform.”
She described Makerfield as a “really small-scale test” of tactical voting, but said that the upcoming Greater Manchester mayoral election to replace Burnham would potentially be a better example and a bigger test of the extent to which tactical voting could threaten Reform’s chances at forming a government at the next general election.
Former Green leader Caroline Lucas told The House magazine that Zack Polanski’s party would “throw everything” at the contest to elect Burnham’s successor.
Stowers added: “It’s quite hard to disaggregate from one by-election; it’s a very specific context.
“It’s hard to know at this point, but if Burnham continues to be effective at uniting progressives behind him in an anti-right-wing vote, then that is a problem for [Reform] on a larger scale.”
Reform figures believe left-leaning voters are increasingly willing to vote tactically to keep the party out of office, and increasingly, they acknowledge that this could pose a growing electoral challenge.
A senior Reform source told PoliticsHome the tactical voting against the party “certainly presents its challenges”, but insisted that Makerfield was a unique contest due to it also potentially being a contest to choose Starmer’s successor as prime minister.
“The one thing that probably unites the whole country is the will to get rid of Keir Starmer.”
Reform is hoping that the ‘Burnham effect’ will not carry over to other seats around the country that Farage’s party hopes to win at the next general election.
In ‘Red Wall’ areas like Nottinghamshire, the Lib Dems and Greens are barely present, making it more difficult for parties on the left to unite the vote against Reform.
The same could be said of areas like Essex, or many Reform-facing seaside towns with economies and demographics that are very different to that of Greater Manchester.
“Fine margins will be the difference between 250 seats or 350 seats,” the Reform source said.
“Every party is trying to navigate a whole new set of balancing acts.”
They acknowledged Reform could have done better on expectation management ahead of the Makerfield by-election, with leading figures in the party having talked up its chances.
“You obviously don’t want supporters to be grafting away and end up disappointed too regularly,” they said.
“We’re all trying to navigate this world of five-party politics; inevitably, it will be ever-changing and also require a lot of local nuance in these campaigns. It’s a constant learning curve, but particularly for a party that’s only really maybe two years old in terms of operating at this level.”
3 min read
Are oil and gas industry representatives making the wrong case for maintaining production in the North Sea?
This was my reflection after the Select Committee hearing on 17 June discussed the question of subsidies. The term subsidy was used to describe government support in the UK for Carbon Capture, Usage, and Storage. And witnesses used terms including support, level playing field, carbon credits and tax changes, all of which represent forms of subsidy when describing what’s needed by UK producers in the North Sea.
I was reminded when listening to the industry representatives that other countries subsidise their oil and gas industries, so it makes sense for us to do so too.
Evidence presented to the Committee shows that the UK’s oil and gas fields are super mature. Remaining UK reserves are therefore more difficult and more expensive to extract than elsewhere.
The logic of the situation is that if we are to maintain UK production levels, the government will have to provide support or subsidies in one way or another.
And from the evidence presented to the Committee, it makes sense to subsidise our own production, as other countries do, to contribute to our energy security. This is especially true in the second energy shock in four years, but true over a much longer period of time, as oil and gas shocks have been with us for many decades.
The argument we heard on 17 June was that changing the tax system would generate higher theoretical tax revenues. But tax revenues are difficult to predict because they depend on the price of oil and gas, which, as we are seeing, is highly volatile.
We subsidise electricity generation in the UK in nuclear and renewables through CfDs and guaranteed strike prices. That’s the right thing to do for our electricity because it is critical for our energy security, so why wouldn’t we take the same subsidised approach with oil and gas?
Which brings me to why we really should subsidise.
In my view, the stronger argument for subsidy is that it supports jobs, communities and supply chains, which are essential for those who depend on the industry for their livelihoods. The same workers, communities and businesses in oil and gas are also essential for the energy transition to be successful.
There is also a case for UK gas production to be maintained as demand falls to reduce our dependence on imports and improve our energy and national security. This point was expressed well by David Whitehouse from OEUK at the Committee session.
My conclusion from what we heard on 17 June was that the UK oil and gas sector would have a stronger case in seeking changes from government if it openly called for subsidies or support for reasons of job and community security, energy security and national security, rather than claiming that it can deliver higher tax revenues.
I was surprised this wasn’t the main argument that the industry representatives made to the Energy Security Select Committee on 17 June.
Labour MP for Sefton Central and chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee
Daniel Lurie is already imagining the scene at Levi’s Stadium on July 1.
The San Francisco Democrat — who, according to at least one recent poll, is the most popular mayor in America — was circulating around his city ahead of Levi’s Stadium hosting Turkey vs. Paraguay tonight, when he began to wrap his head around his good fortune.
The venue is scheduled to host the Round of 32 match featuring the Group D winner on July 1, and that’s very likely to be the U.S. team.
“It’ll be incredible,” Lurie, a no-nonsense technocrat, told POLITICO. “It’ll be a thrilling moment for San Francisco, and for our region.”
He beamed in to a FaceTime interview from Southern Station, having already been at two watch parties that capture the new San Francisco he’s trying to build: the East Cut neighborhood, and then Fieldwork Brewing at China Basin.
And Lurie knows ball: Not only has he attended five World Cups, he is also an investor in 49ers Enterprises, which purchased Leeds in 2023.
He drew a parallel to his English club’s own turnaround this season: newly promoted and expected to go straight back down, Leeds instead finished safely mid-table. Lurie is trying to engineer a similar revival in San Francisco, using major events like the World Cup and February’s Super Bowl to project competence and attract visitors and families.
In San Francisco, such a turnaround means restoring a sense of competence to city government — and managing large events like the Super Bowl and the World Cup are key to that effort.
“We are managing for results here in San Francisco, and what’s critical about those results is keeping people safe, making sure that people want to be here in San Francisco, that they have a great time, and that they want to come back,” Lurie said.
His turnaround effort will be vastly aided by Open AI’s expected IPO, which will expand his tax base but also pose challenges.
“We got Anthropic. We got Open AI. We have a company that’s four years old in Cursor that just got acquired by Elon Musk’s company for $60 billion and hardly anyone’s talking about that,” Lurie said. “I think we want these companies here. We want them paying their taxes here, and we want them being engaged in the community. We want them involved in civic life, we want their employees involved and engaged in their neighborhoods, but we also want an economy, and we want an economy that works for everyone — that lifts up the entire community, and isn’t just for the select few.”
Lurie said he is laser-focused on affordability.
“We are every day focused on building more housing, building more affordable housing, making child care more affordable,” Lurie said. “We are the first city in the country to provide access and opportunity to free early childhood education, [age] zero to five, for any family of four making $210,000 a year or less.”
The aim? Draw more families within the city’s confines.
“We’re gonna hopefully keep more working families here in our city, and we want them to believe that they can build a life here long term, so people don’t get priced out — so we have a lot of work to do.”
Lurie largely avoids the national spotlight — the rare exception coming when he netted a jumper on “The Pat McAfee Show” early this year — and feverish culture war issues in favor of a get-shit-done approach to governing.
“Our number one industry is tourism,” Lurie said. “And when people visit our city or when they take their kids to school each day, they don’t care if their mayor is a Democrat or a Republican.”
As of Friday evening, as he prepared to watch Turkey vs. Paraguay, Lurie couldn’t fully allow himself to contemplate what it would mean for Levi’s Stadium to play host to a U.S. squad that’s rocking and rolling over opponents.
“We cannot jinx it,” Lurie said. “But it’s looking very much like we will host USA in the first knockout round. My hope: I’ll be there to root on USA.”
CANBERRA — It was disappointment from start to finish around the USA vs. Australia match in the Bush Capital, won comfortably by the American side.
Neither of Canberra’s Socceroos made the starting lineup and the local government failed to provide an outdoor watch site for the match, despite a heavy social media campaign from locals. With federal politicians out of town and back in their districts this week, the campaign lacked star power and fell on deaf ears.
That left thousands to fill inner city pubs and the University of Canberra, which were allowed special trading hours for the match, from 4.30 a.m.
Australia’s politicians — vocal in their support in the lead-up to the match — went silent quickly, after Australia’s own goal 11 minutes minutes into the game.
If the Aussies’ lackluster performance left the crowd subdued, they found energy to boo Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a notably unpopular figure in Australia, which embraced harsh Covid lockdowns and vaccines — when he appeared on the match broadcast.
You don’t have to rely on The Discourse to know whether soccer is finally being embraced by America. Political ad spending targeted to catch World Cup viewers tells you all you need to know.
Look no further than today’s Susan Collins-aligned Pine Tree Results PAC launching the next phase of a seven-figure general election ad campaign targeting Democrat Graham Platner in Maine, the latest that flickered to life statewide during the U.S. Men’s National Team World Cup match against Australia.
“The first U.S. World Cup game was the most watched soccer broadcast in American history,” a GOP operative working on the Maine senate race, and granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. “Maine markets are performing better than national average and the critical Portland DMA has a significant soccer fan base.”
Or consider that James Talarico’s first ad buy of the general election Senate campaign is an $800,000 Spanish-language TV campaign spot set to air during each U.S. and Mexico group stage match.
In Denver, in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, there’s Republican Gabe Evans in a Spanish language ad, debating whether it’s soccer or football with his mother.
In politics, campaigns and super PACs are reluctant to spend money where there aren’t eyeballs, so each of these set pieces are a datapoint bearing out the truth that international soccer can draw them.
FIFA rang in Juneteenth, the country’s newest federal holiday, with a video that played in Seattle ahead of the U.S. team’s pivotal showdown with Australia.
It stars Seattle Supersonics legend and NBA Hall of Famer Gary Payton and features iconic Seattle locations.
“Some remember, some reflect, while many others celebrate,” Payton says in the video, which highlights landmarks including the Northwest African American Museum and Pike Place Market. “This day means freedom, black liberation, joy, jubilation and celebration. And today, we are definitely celebrating.”
Leonardo Santiago, head of media relations for FIFA26 Inc., said the organization plans to commemorate the holiday marking the end of slavery at each World Cup match taking place on Friday. Separate videos personalized to Foxborough, Massachusetts, which hosts Scotland and Morocco, and Philadelphia, where Brazil and Haiti will face off, and Santa Clara, California, are also dropping to mark the holiday.
“FIFA worked with each Host City to ensure the video is personalized for each stadium, featuring imagery specific to that city while recognizing the nationwide holiday and its importance,” Santiago said. “As the video plays, the stadium will also have complementary graphics on the ribbon boards as well.”
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