Politics
How distraught Remainers threw away the possibility of a second EU Referendum
No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second Referendum by Morgan Jones
Morgan Jones starts by describing the favourite headgear of indignant pro-European protesters: blue berets with yellow EU stars stuck onto them by passionate Remainers in Bath.
These first-time campaigners were distraught at losing the EU Referendum, held ten years ago this June, and believed they could yet overturn the result. Jones notes
“the strange, anarchic and stubborn spirit of older, previously not hugely political, people doing activism, often viewing getting under the right people’s skin as a victory in and of itself.”
Nothing would induce these bereaved Remainers to moderate their tone, and they could not see their efforts were off-putting to considerable numbers of people whose support they needed if they were ever to get a second referendum, and then overturn the result of the first. As Jones says,
“the base and the culture they created was, well, kind of mad, out of touch with the country and made them often deeply alienating to advocates for their own cause.”
The campaigners believed with passionate intensity that Leave had only won by lying to uneducated voters in backward parts of the country. As the political scientist Rob Ford puts it, the view taken by zealous Remainers of Leave voters was:
“They were lied to, stupid. They are reactionary. They are wrong. The vote was not legitimate. The vote was not fair. They were misled by the media.”
Bereft Remainers could not accept there were honest, honourable, intelligent arguments for leaving the EU.
Nor, usually, were academics able to see this. Anand Menon, Director of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, told Jones:
“What was absolutely staggering was the degree to which the academic literature’s starting point was, ‘We’re in the European Union. It’s a good thing. Let’s look at how it works.’ “
In Menon’s view, “We failed as a profession, I think, pretty badly.”
During the 2015 general election I went for ConHome to Bolton West to gauge opinion there, and wrote a piece entitled “Bolton West wants to talk about immigration”, in which I quoted a voter who said:
“We get treated like second-class citizens.”
Voters who felt treated like second-class citizens took the chance in the EU Referendum to confound the Establishment by voting Leave.
Immediately after the Referendum, it was not feasible simply to tell these voters they had got it wrong, but that changed after the general election called by Theresa May in 2017, at which the voters took the chance to render her parliamentary position precarious.
It now seemed worthwhile to a coalition of anti-Brexit organisations to set up People’s Vote, launched in April 2018 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden to campaign for a second referendum.
But a large number of Remainers wished only to preach to the converted. The New European was set up as a newspaper which would only appeal to the converted, who were sufficiently numerous to make it a success.
On Twitter, the hashtag #FBPE, standing for Follow Back Pro-EU, was alienating, Jones observes, to pretty much anyone who was not already a strident Remainer, and was “primarily used by people who were not very good at speaking on the internet, who couldn’t quite get the tone right”.
It was part of a “drive to insularity” which ruled out the winning of converts, and tended instead to antagonise anyone who leant towards Leave, and also anyone who was not sure what to think.
Labour Party members were generally pro-EU, but Jeremy Corbyn, who remained leader until April 2020, was a silent and ineffectual Leaver, who nevertheless thought that party members ought to be allowed to have their say, which they got by applauding Sir Keir Starmer to the echo at the party conference of 2018, when after saying another referendum might be needed to break the logjam, he uttered nine words unauthorised by Corbyn’s office:
“And nobody is ruling out Remain as an option.”
Jones sketches the many different pro-EU organisations which jostled for influence at this time, and touches on some of eminent people who were involved on the Remain side, including Roland Rudd, Hugo Dixon, Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Andrew Adonis, Alan Rusbridger, Will Hutton, Bill Emmott, Anne Applebaum and Tom Baldwin.
Some of these people could not stand each other. Campbell was heard to say:
“If a computer designed someone to annoy me, you would get Hugo Dixon.”
Campbell’s first career was as a tabloid journalist. He is a bit of a brute, but understands power, and the transforming importance of the story.
Dixon had been at The Economist and The Financial Times, and quoted a prissy remark made to him in 2015 by Hutton, a former editor of The Observer:
“This campaign is going to be polluted by lies and by twisting of facts.”
Dixon had accordingly created an organisation called InFacts, to “try to set the record straight”. We see here the factual heresy, as Claud Cockburn called it, in all its naivety and bogus even-handedness. For as Dixon admits to Jones,
“The fact was that 99 per cent of our fire was targeted on the Brexiteers and increasingly on Boris.”
Boris Johnson is an old friend of Dixon: they were at Ashdown House, Eton and Balliol together.
But Dixon and Johnson remained friends. The bitter divisions were between various Remainers, and Jones relates in a calm tone quite a few of the vicious insults they flung at each other. Baldwin, the Director of Communications at People’s Vote, remembered
“Roland Rudd saying, ‘Well I have appointed myself Chairman of the People’s Vote Campaign’ – in the same way that Idi Amin gave himself Victoria Crosses – or, ‘My friend from college, Hugo Dixon, is now Deputy Chairman of the People’s Vote campaign’, which was news to a lot of us.”
Meanwhile the most fervent Remainers went on huge marches through London, which gave those who took part the feeling that victory was in sight, but which made many onlookers cringe.
Members of staff at People’s Vote tried to persuade the demonstrators to carry Union Jacks instead of European flags, but were informed that the Union Jack is “a National Front symbol”.
As Baldwin said, the more the campaign empowered the most virulent Remain activists, the less chance there was of winning over the Conservative MPs whose support they needed in order to defeat Brexit in Parliament.
In October 2019, the antipathies within People’s Vote burst into public view when Rudd sacked Baldwin and the campaign’s Director, James McGrory.
The staff of People’s Vote sided by a margin of 40 to three with Baldwin and McGrory. When Rudd attempted to appeal to the staff by saying, “We’ve been through a lot together, ” one of them retorted, “No we haven’t. What’s my name?”
This book has the great merit of focussing on what ten years ago was the losing side. Jones in not particularly eloquent, but she is careful and scrupulous and fair as she recounts how the enraged Waitrose shoppers who were the most zealous Remainers antagonised the voters in Bolton West who wanted their country back.
7 min read
A security check on a fleet of new electric buses in Oslo late last year uncovered features that caused international alarm.
The 300 Yutong buses were sending data back to its manufacturers in China. The company insisted this flow was necessary to “optimise” their performance.
But Norway’s transport authorities moved to prevent access to data being sent to China. They also said they had mitigated any possibility of a ‘kill switch’ that could be activated by the manufacturer crippling the fleet from afar.
The incident brought into sharp relief the challenges the Chinese-dominated market in electric vehicles are posing western policymakers – made all the more acute with the advent of self-driving cars.
China dominates the global EV market, with its home-grown company BYD overtaking Tesla as the world’s largest electric carmaker last year. Amid reports that Chinese self-driving taxis could be trialled in the UK as soon as this year, MPs and peers from across the political spectrum are urging caution.
The BBC reported in December that Uber and Lyft had unveiled partnerships with Chinese tech giant Baidu to pilot these taxis in London, which Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander called a “vote of confidence in our plans for self-driving vehicles”.
But Alex Sobel, Labour MP for Leeds Central and Headingley, tells The House he is worried these partnerships – and others with Chinese firms – could open the door to major data vulnerabilities. Under Chinese law, companies operating within its national borders are required to hand over any data requested by the authorities in Beijing.
“I am concerned that people’s personal information potentially can be shared with the Chinese state and used for a variety of purposes, if you are particularly concerned for certain communities – for instance, from Hong Kong, from Tibet, Uyghurs, or Chinese who have a dissenting view from the Chinese government,” Sobel says.
Chinese activists defying their government don’t only face persecution at home. Beijing conducts an extensive campaign of transnational repression against dissidents and critics – such as posting bounties against high-profile Hong Kong democracy campaigners who fled to safety in the West.
“Transnational repression is becoming increasingly sophisticated,” Sobel says. “And I’m not just saying that about China or other countries as well, but other countries don’t have as much reach and penetration to the UK as China.”
Sobel adds that while he believes there should be a kill switch in any AI-powered devices as a failsafe mechanism, such switches should be in control of the country’s government in which the technology is operating.
“If the Chinese state decided, for whatever reason, they want to act in a hostile way towards the UK and kill all of these off at a point in time when there’s a deep penetration in the UK, obviously that would have a massive effect.”
North Durham Labour MP Luke Akehurst is another with concerns. He posed a written question to the Transport Secretary in January, asking her to assess the risk “that electric buses operating in the UK could be remotely rendered inoperable via their internet-connected systems by hostile state actors”.
Dr Alessandro Arduino, an affiliate lecturer at King’s College London, tells The House that robo-taxis and other self-driving vehicles offer a “revealing case study” in how new technology can sit on a fine line between fresh innovation and national security dangers.
He notes that these cars generate reams of data as they drive – from location information to citizen movement and urban layout. “Such data is invaluable not only for training artificial intelligence systems but also for forecasting and strategic analysis,” he says. “China’s own policy framework is explicit in treating data and AI as matters of state sovereignty and national security, and I do believe that context matters.”
Such a dramatic threat as a kill switch would not be the first order concern, he adds, saying that the most urgent consideration is whether operating companies can keep their data secure from malicious actors.
A Transport for London (TfL) spokesperson says: “Safety is our top priority, and we are interested in learning more about technologies that could potentially help deliver safety benefits for all road users.
“TfL recognises the challenge of legislating in response to changes in automated vehicle technology in a timely manner to ensure benefits are delivered and risks are mitigated.”
It is not the first time the use of Chinese tech in Britain’s infrastructure has faced fierce opposition over national security fears. In 2020, the government halted the use of Huawei equipment in Britain’s 5G network and ordered that existing tech be removed by the end of 2027.
But it comes at a time when Downing Street is seeking a reset in relations with China after a frosty few years. In January, the controversial Chinese new ‘mega-embassy’ in London was granted planning permission – despite repeated concerns over its proximity to crucial fibre-optic cables and potential for heightened espionage.
Keir Starmer has also now become the first British prime minister to visit Beijing in eight years, travelling along with a cohort of business leaders in a drive to reap the vaunted benefits of dealing with the world’s second-largest economy.
The Prime Minister’s visit saw the announcement of plans to allow British citizens visa-free travel to China and the lifting of sanctions on MPs who had blasted Beijing’s repression of Uyghur Muslims.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith MP, a persistent China ‘hawk’, says he would like to see a pilot of self-driving taxis in the UK blocked if it uses Chinese technology. “They all basically data-harvest those who use them. It goes all the way down the line.”
Chinese companies such as Baidu have also long been criticised for their role in online censorship in the country, where the government maintains fiercely tight control over the information space.
Sam Goodman of China Strategic Risks Institute tells The House: “Given the integral role Baidu plays in internet censorship in China, and its legal requirement to share users’ data with China’s Ministry of State Security, it is hard to see how it can be trusted with the data security and personal safety of the British public.”
As AI technology, including that used in self-driving vehicles, continues to advance at breakneck pace, governments across the world have been left scrambling to find a policy answer on how best to regulate the sector and mitigate its risks without suffocating innovation.
Professor James Davenport of the University of Bath tells The House that lawmakers face grappling with both the novelty and broad range of AI technologies as they figure out effective regulation. “For example,” he explains, “the EU AI Act will impose the same requirements on self-driving taxis as on chatbots offering psychiatric advice. The alternative would be an enormous mass of detailed legislation and incredible turf wars.”
Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, who was refused entry to Hong Kong last year, says the proposed pilot “fits a worrying pattern of the government growing far too cosy with Beijing”. Hobhouse is among the voices who believe the pilot should not go ahead until the government can categorically prove there would be no risk posed to national security or public safety.
She tells The House: “From approving a Chinese super-embassy in London to pushing ahead with closer economic ties despite repeated security warnings, the government are sending the wrong signal: that trade is being prioritised over security, human rights and the safety of those who have fled repression to build new lives in the UK.”
A government spokesperson tells The House: “Safety is central to our plans for automated-vehicle pilots. All proposed deployments will be subjected to rigorous safety and cyber-security assessments.”
Baidu did not respond to a request for comment. It has previously denied allegations of links to the Chinese state and military. An Uber spokesperson said: “No matter which country an AV partner is from, we only work with them if they can both meet Uber’s own high standards and fully comply with all applicable laws on safety, security, and privacy.” Lyft did not reply to requests for comment.
Brit Awards organisers have announced plans to honour Ozzy Osbourne’s legacy at this year’s ceremony.
On Thursday evening, it was revealed that the awards show will end with a star-studded musical tribute to the Prince Of Darkness, who died in July at the age of 76.
As well as Ozzy posthumously receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award on Saturday night, the show will also conclude with a rendition of his track No More Tears, curated by his wife Sharon Osbourne.
Robbie Williams will lend his voice to the performance, which will also feature several musicians who worked with Ozzy over the years, including Adam Wakeman, Robert Trujillo, Tommy Clufetos and Zakk Wylde.
Ozzy and Sharon previously hosted the Brit Awards back in 2008, alongside their two youngest children, Kelly and Jack Osbourne.
Brit Awards committee chair Stacey Tang said: “Ozzy Osbourne has been a mighty force in modern music. Possessing an unmistakable voice and unique presence, he reshaped the sound and spirit of rock, inspiring generations of artists who followed.
“This Lifetime Achievement Award recognises a remarkable legacy built on originality and enduring influence, that continues to connect with fans worldwide.”
This year’s Brits will also feature performances from British stars like Harry Styles, Raye, Olivia Dean and Wolf Alice, as well as international talent including Rosalía, Alex Warren and Sombr.
Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami – better known as the singing voices of KPop Demon Hunters’ Huntr/x – have also pre-recorded a performance as part of the night’s proceedings, with Mark Ronson set to perform a medley to celebrate his Outstanding Contribution win.
Olivia Dean and Lola Young are going into this year’s Brits with the most nominations, with Jacob Alon already unveiled as the latest recipient of the Critics’ Choice Award and PinkPantheress making pop history with her Producer Of The Year win.
Noel Gallagher is also set to be honoured with the Songwriter Of The Year title in a controversial move given he’s not actually released any new music in the last 12 months.
The 2026 Brit Awards will air live on Saturday 28 February at 8.15pm on ITV1.
So the race everyone said was too close to call wasn’t so close after all. The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has won the Gorton and Denton by-election with 14,980 votes, nearly 41 per cent of all those cast in the Greater Manchester seat. Meanwhile, Reform UK has pushed a flailing Labour Party into third place, taking 10,578 votes to Labour’s 9,364. That noise you can hear in the background is blood vessels bursting in Downing Street.
This was Labour’s race to lose, and it has done so spectacularly. Keir Starmer’s reverse-midas touch has proven even more formidable than anyone dared think. This race began with the prime minister blocking popular Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from standing, to avoid giving his rival a place in Westminster, leaving Manchester councillor Angeliki Stogia holding the bag. It has finished with a 26.4 per cent swing from Labour to Greens. The Zack Polanski clown car is now officially the go-to vehicle for disaffected ‘progressive’ revolt.
If Labour can be humiliated here, it can be humiliated anywhere. At the General Election just 19 months ago, Labour won more than 50 per cent of the vote in the constituency. Gorton and Denton was its 38th safest seat. It had held it for generations. Now it has become a neat demonstration of this Labour Party’s ability to haemorrhage votes in all directions. Graduates and Muslims seem to have broken to the Greens, while white working-class voters plumped more for Reform. Once-coveted voter blocs are abandoning Starmer left and right. The Labour coalition has disintegrated.
This is a stunning win for the Greens. No one can take that away from them. But the manner in which they won bodes ill not just for Labour, but for our fractious nation, too. Spencer effectively rode Britain’s crisis of integration to victory – campaigning on Gaza, TikToking in Urdu and leaning into the Islamic sectarianism that has metastasised since October 7. It proved a potent combination in the inner-city wards, where as much as 40 per cent of residents are Muslim. Rather than appeal to voters on the basis of shared interests and a shared civic identity, the Greens didn’t even assume their voters spoke the same language. The Muslim Vote group endorsed them. George ‘Gaza’ Galloway stood down his Workers Party to give the Greens a clear run. In the future, we can expect more and more elections to come down to this depressing demographic headcount.
The Green Party has been shameless in ginning up anti-Israel grievances, even before Polanski hypnotised the membership. At the last election, 20 of its candidates were exposed in the press over their pondscum Israelophobia. One of them praised a ‘pro-Palestine’ march that disrupted a Holocaust remembrance march… at Auschwitz. Naturally, he was also the party’s diversity coordinator. Mothin Ali, the Greens’ new co-deputy leader, fond of chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’, posted a video on 8 October 2023, the day after Hamas’s pogrom in southern Israel, saying ‘Palestinians have the right to resist occupying forces’. The Greens are now Britain’s preeminent Islamo-left party, the party of choice for those who think Labour isn’t Jew-baity enough.
But in this the Greens are only screaming out loud what was previously whispered. Labour has long practised this kind of pork-barrel identity politics, quietly pushing leaflets through doors appealing to minority voters off the back of faraway conflicts and intra-ethnic tensions. (The Tories’ hands haven’t been totally clean on this front, either.) Now Labour has been bitten by its own divisive, multicultural politicking – first by the ‘Gaza independents’ in 2024, now by the Polanski-ites.
For all the talk of Reform UK creating ‘division’, candidate Matt Goodwin’s mildly controversial comments about Britishness pale into insignificance when set against the Greens’ unabashed grievance politics. While everyone knew Reform’s best hopes lay in the white working-class Denton end of the seat, Goodwin ran on putting all of Gorton and Denton first, telling me in an interview for spiked last week he could peel off at least some voters in the more multiracial, inner-city Gorton. While this campaign has proven to be a tough lesson in expectation management, Reform’s second-place finish still puts down a significant marker, in a place that should never really have been in play for it. (Reform-friendly Denton makes up just a third of the seat.) Still, in my brief time there I detected something of an enthusiasm gap, between Reform-curious voters tempted to give Goodwin a go and Reform-deranged voters desperate to keep the supposed ‘far right’ out.
Gorton and Denton is hardly a typical constituency – an L-shaped seat, created in 2024, linking wildly different groups and areas together. But in its way, the campaign has been a grim little microcosm of Balkanised Britain. Demographics pitted against one another. A fractious, multiparty politics to fit our fraying, multicultural age. We desperately need to put the pieces back together again.
Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater_.
Pink has dismissed claims that she and her husband Carey Hart have split for a second time.
On Thursday night, People magazine claimed that the couple had called it quits after 20 years of marriage.
Responding in a video shared to her Instagram, the Get The Party Started singer said: “I was just alerted to the fact that I’m separating from my husband. I didn’t know! Thank you, People magazine. Thank you, Us Weekly. Thank you for letting me know.
“I was wondering, would you also like to tell our children? My 14-year-old and nine-year-old are also unaware. Or, do you want to talk about some real news?”
She continued: “Do you want to talk about the Epstein files? Do you want to talk about systemic racism? Or misogyny in sports? Or how classy the women’s hockey team is? Or how eight of the 12 medals won in the Olympics this year for the US were won by women?
“Or do you maybe want to talk about the fact that I got nominated the first year I was eligible for the Rock And Roll motherfucking Hall Of Fame? Do you want to talk about my accomplishments? Or do you only want to talk about my supposed demise?”
She finally branded the reports “fake news” (conceding that she “fucking hates that term”), before concluding: “I love you all. Go with God. And trash news, you can do better.”
Pink captioned her post: “Like I always say, if you don’t hear it from me, don’t believe the hype. Stay tuned though! Who knows what could happen next!?!”
The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter has been married to motocross racer Carey Hart since 2006, with whom she shares a son and daughter, Willow and Jameson.
In 2008, the two announced their separation, which inspired much of the material on Pink’s fifth album Funhouse including the number one single So What, before eventually reconciling.
We hope you love the products we recommend! All of them were independently selected by our editors. Just so you know, HuffPost UK may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them. Oh, and FYI – prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.
It’s been a long, grey, wet old winter, but thankfully it’s nearly over.
The sun has already started to peek out from behind the clouds in a meaningful way, which suddenly makes me feel like I’ve actually never had any problems in my entire life.
It’s the perfect time for a joyful spring refresh in your home. So, whether you’re in the mood to drag your bedroom into the new season after what feels like years of grim darkness, or you just want to brighten things up in your safe haven, here are some of the very best boudoir buys to bring the joy back.
Zack Polanski’s party achieved a seismic victory in Gorton and Denton (Alamy)
3 min read
The Green Party has achieved a seismic victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election, with the Labour Party pushed into third place.
Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer received 14,980 votes, equivalent to 40 per cent of the vote.
Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin came second, receiving 10,578 votes (28 per cent), while Labour’s Angeliki Stogia received just 9,364 votes (25 per cent).
The result is a major blow to Keir Starmer, with Labour having held the Greater Manchester seat for more than a century and returned a 13,000 majority just 18 months ago in the 2024 general election, winning 50 per cent of the vote.
The Prime Minister’s leadership is likely to come under renewed pressure as a result.
It could also be a sign of things to come for the government in May when elections are held in Wales, Scotland and at councils across England.
For the Greens, it is a stunning outcome, with Zack Polanski’s party growing its vote share in Gorton and Denton by nearly 28 per cent.
The contest was triggered when Andrew Gwynne resigned as Labour MP for Gorton and Denton in January on health grounds.
Speaking in the early hours of Friday morning, the Green Party’s Spencer said: “There is an appetite here for change, and there are people across this constituency and much further beyond who are rejecting the old political parties and who are coming together to fight for something better, but who are doing it positively and in a really hopeful way.”
Spencer, who is a plumber and leads the Greens on Trafford Council, said the results “have shown that we don’t have to accept being turned against each other. We can demand better without hating each other”.
The result, the Greens’ first by-election victory, means that the party now has five MPs in Westminster.
It also further demonstrates the threat posed to Labour’s left flank by Polanski’s party. The Greens have surged in national opinion polls since the London Assembly Mayor became leader in September.
Polanski said that the result showed that “voting Green is the way to defeat Reform”.
“If we see a swing like this at the next general election, there will be a tidal wave of new Green MPs,” he added.
While Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham had hoped to stand for Labour in the seat and return to Westminster as an MP, he was blocked from running by senior Labour figures.
Despite the move, PoliticsHome reported earlier this month that Labour was relying on the mayor to help hold the seat.
Politics
Mike Salem: Parliament passes complex new laws – leaving councils with the burden of implementing them locally
Mike Salem is a UK Country Associate for the Consumer Choice Center (CCC), focusing on economy, technology, and lifestyle.
Running up to the local elections, many candidates will promise to tackle local issues, while incumbents highlight their ability to maintain services despite rising demand and shrinking budgets. But an often overlooked problem lies deeper: the fundamental disconnect between local and national governments.
When Westminster legislates, it considers political priorities, manifesto pledges, and often Whitehall-centric perspectives. Take the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, currently in its Report Stage in the Lords. The Bill aims to ban cigarette (as well as a nicotine alternative, heated tobacco) sales to anyone born from 2009 and place heavy restrictions on vaping and other nicotine alternatives, such as flavours of vapes and nicotine pouches. While the intention may be public health, the real-world consequences on local authorities are significant.
Existing UK tobacco policy already makes smoking extremely expensive. A legal pack of cigarettes costs on average £16.60, compared with around £6.60 in much of Europe, a £10 difference. This is largely due to the UK’s tobacco duty “escalator,” which rises each year by inflation (RPI) plus an extra percentage point. Tobacco duty accounts for roughly 80 per cent of a pack’s retail price.
Bans like the 10-pack restriction under the European Tobacco Product Directive in 2016 pushed consumers to buy 20-packs instead. The unintended consequence? Illegal cigarette sales skyrocketed. Enforcement bodies and trading standards report that most UK residents live within minutes of illicit tobacco sources. Between 2021 and 2024, legal cigarette sales fell by 45.5 per cent, increasing pressure on locally funded Trading Standards services.
The proposed generational ban will only add to this burden, extending enforcement responsibilities to adults who previously could purchase legally.
The disposable vape ban, which came into effect on June 1st last year, provides a similar example. Many retailers continued selling existing stock at discounted rates rather than discarding it. Some were unaware of the ban entirely. The definition of “reusable” vapes was circumvented, allowing stronger battery devices to be sold at disposable prices, ironically creating more environmental harm than before.
Trading Standards officers have had to navigate this complex new regime, spending valuable time training staff and interpreting the legislation. Further restrictions on vape flavours, display, packaging, promotion, and other nicotine products such as heated tobacco and nicotine pouches will add more enforcement responsibilities, all without corresponding increases in local resources.
These examples illustrate how central government legislation puts immense pressure on local authorities. High streets are dying because legal options become expensive, illegal markets flourish, and small businesses struggle to survive. When illegal markets thrive, it also leads to increased criminal activities, with more dangerous streets which will now require more policy, and the cycle of financial doom multiplies. Business rates, set by central government, have been rising, yet councils only retain 50 per cent of the revenue in England, despite being its collectors. Local councils end up enforcing policies and collecting taxes while bearing the operational costs.
As you consider your vote in the forthcoming local elections, think about which councillors will stand up for your community and advocate for local authority interests in the face of overwhelming central legislation. Central government may legislate extensively, but it is local councils that bear the consequences. Ensuring they are equipped and supported is essential for healthy high streets, functional enforcement services, and practical local governance.
A prospective councillor who might promise you more from Westminster will end up hurting your pockets.
Politics
Simon Walters: Badenoch’s gamble on student loans has paid off. But not everyone wanted her to do it
Simon Walters is a political journalist and Consultant Editor (Politics) of the Independent.
The way he is going it is soon going to require a Maths degree to keep up with the tally of Keir Starmer’s U turns.
According to reports the Prime Minister is preparing to perform another somersault – his fifteenth – over the soaring cost of student loans.
If so, it will be good news for millions of students – including Maths graduates – saddled
with debts of up to £60,000 and rising.
Incredibly, recent changes by Rachel Reeves to the student loans repayment system, originally supposed to protect low earners, mean that before long ex-students on the minimum wage face having cash deducted from their meagre pay packet.
With professional job prospects for graduates at an all-time low it adds insult to injury.
Politically speaking, a Starmer climbdown will also be good news for Kemi Badenoch who can chalk it up as another personal victory over him.
The Conservative leader has led calls for student loan interest rates – in some cases as high as six per cent (twice the cost of the home loan they can’t afford either!) to be reduced.
Some of her own aides advised her against it, arguing it was a ‘niche interest’ and that it was futile for the Tories to attempt to woo the ‘campus vote’ – long seen as a minority and overwhelmingly Left leaning.
On top of that some of the loan repayment rates at the centre of the controversy, the ‘Plan 2’ scheme, were set by David Cameron’s Conservative Lib Dem Coalition administration.
But Badenoch, who entered Parliament a year after Cameron left Downing Street, wasn’t put off by that small inconvenient detail.
She persisted, arguing the vast increase in student numbers in the last 25 years, allied to rising loan costs, presents the Tories with a captive new audience, an army of aspirational but frustrated thirty somethings, some of whom are still forced to live with mum and dad, in no small part because of their crippling student debt.
She could see that potentially they are a Millennial and Gen Z version of ‘Essex Man,’ ‘Mondeo Man,’ ‘Worcester Woman’ or the more generic ‘Red Wall’ – key groups of voters whose concerns were seen to have been ignored, and shrewdly targeted by leaders from Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair to Nigel Farage who spotted a gap in the market.
Badenoch also had the would-be successful leader’s necessary slice of luck when she was handed a publicity coup on a prime time plate after financial guru Martin Lewis attempted a bungled ambush of her on Monday.
Bursting into the ‘Good Morning Britain’ TV studio unannounced he squeezed next to presenter Ed Balls on the sofa where the two proceeded to give one of the most egregious combined displays of mansplaining ever seen.
Kemi could not have been less flummoxed.
She swotted the two Alpha Males away with the same sang froid she demonstrates in dispatching Starmer at the Commons Despatch Box every Wednesday. (Not that anyone has ever accused him of being an Alpha Male.)
Which is precisely what she did to the Prime Minister this week on the issue of student loans.
If Starmer does act to curb student loans no one seriously expects Kemi to be crowned campus queen. But it will further emphasise the growing divide in their perceived authority over their parties. It makes it all the more certain that Badenoch will lead hers into the next election, and all the more likely that Starmer will not.
Badenoch is not so naive as to believe she is anywhere close to building a platform to win that election.
But in an age when Conservative speakers are more likely to have been deplatformed on university forums it is a beginning.
Politics
Georgia Gilholy: We should all shop at Gail’s. It’s a beverage and pastry based counter-protest
Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.
It is often said that “in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”.
Funnily enough, this quote itself is often falsely attributed to George Orwell. But regardless of who did or did not coin it, this memeified phrase strikes at something important. Indeed, sometimes as little as buying an overpriced iced matcha latte can feel revolutionary in deeply conformist London. This is especially true if one is doing so, not merely to lap up some delicious green caffeine, but to prove a point.
It is for this reason, I have henceforth decided to take a detour en route to my local tube station, in order to pick up something from Gail’s Bakery.
Yes, this is indeed a divisive thing to do, given that the chain’s newest branch in Archway, North London, has been vandalised twice in the same week. Aside from the usual string of anti-Israel slogans scribbled across the cafe, one simply read “Support Local businesses”. Is it not presumably better to support such businesses by offering them your custom, rather than ordering graffiti spray off Amazon and dousing rival eateries with it?
That numerous of photographed placards and graffiti also omit a vital apostrophe of possession should tell you all you need to know about these charlatans.
Luke Johnson, who masterminded Gail’s expansion and sale to Boston-based Bain Capital, and remains an investor, was a Brexit supporter and high-profile critic of the government’s tyrannical COVID-19 policies. He has also slammed net-zero zealotry. This is unusually gutsy for today’s typical high-profile businessman, who generally seeks to keep their head down and succumb to the whinging bien pensant, who have increasingly directed their ire toward Israel.
Johnson has also courageously bucked the trend on the matter of the Middle East, praising the so-called “Start-Up Nation’s” entrepreneurial grit, and slamming “the deranged defence of Hamas” in academia. While Johnson is not Jewish or Israeli, Gail’s founder, the baker Yael Mejia is both. The chain is therefore named, not after Coronation Street’s chaotic matriarch, but using the anglicised version of Yael: Gail. Although Mejia is no longer financially linked to the chain which calls her its namesake, Bain Capital reportedly has some investments in private companies based in Israel.
Is Israel committing a “genocide” as these anti-Gail’s goons claim in their messy graffiti? No, it is engaged in a war of self-defence.
Is Gail’s an Israeli company? No.
Even if it were an Israeli company, would that make it automatically complicit or approving of any and all actions ever taken by the Israeli government or military? No, especially given that Israel, unlike China, Russia, Iran and Qatar (who have far more business interests in London than the Jewish State) is a free market economy with a free press and free and fair elections.
The reality is that none of these obvious facts matter to those who have decided that any and all connection with Israel and its culture, however vague, is a grave moral offence.
It is not only Gail’s that has been subject to these nonsensical attacks for years, but Marks and Spencer, Tesco, or indeed any company that the anti-Israel mob deem inadequately anti-Israel. Just this week, ‘activists’ tweeted photographs of themselves sticking fingers inside Israeli avocados, and moving them inside supermarket freezers to render them inedible. In 1985, one person was killed when suspected Palestinian terrorists detonated a bomb inside a Paris branch of Marks and Spencer.
No better is the brainrot of this set exemplified than by Rachida Benamar, who describes herself as a “qualified Career & Life Coach”.
Benamar posted a viral X post reading: “Boycott Gail’s bakery. Gail’s was founded by Israeli entrepreneur Gail Mejia and Ran Avidan. The current owner Luke Johnson’s stances are disgusting and what he said about Gaza is horrific. Please share widely” One response noted: “What did he say? Would be helpful to put it up if you can.” Naturally, she did not. Why? Because Johnson made no such “horrific” comments about Gaza. But to those of Benamar’s persuasion, any remarks about Israel or Gaza that do not include a complete surrender to those that would see the Jewish State wiped from the map, qualify as “horrific”.
The Gail’s fiasco was never about protesting injustice, but about ensuring that anything and everyone Jewish, Israeli (or perceived as such) is driven out of public life.
We should all do our small part to avoid this evil coming to pass, one chilled beverage at a time!
A Labour MP has hit out at Keir Starmer after the party’s humiliating defeat in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
Karl Turner said the result – in which the party came third behind the Greens and Reform UK – was “a catastrophe”.
In particular, he blamed the prime minister’s decision to block Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from being Labour’s candidate.
The by-election was triggered by the resignation on health grounds of Andrew Gwynne, who won the newly-created seat for Labour with a majority of nearly 13,500 at the 2024 general election.
Turner, the MP for Kingston-upon-Hull East, said: “The reality is we’ve ended up with a situation which we could have avoided, that’s just the truth. This was avoidable. But here we are, in Manchester, with the Greens. It’s the worst result the Labour Party could have ever had, frankly.
“So here we are with a situation where we can’t out-left wing the Greens, we tried to out-right wing Reform on immigration and other such matters.
“My message to Keir Starmer, the prime minister, is this: why don’t we try and be Labour?”
Turner added: “For crying out loud, start listening to Labour MPs, start listening to people who knock the doors, who’ve been doing it for ever.
“That’s the truth of where this Labour Party are. What on earth is the Labour Party doing? What on earth has the Labour Party come to? We’ve now come got the Greens in Manchester – it’s a catastrophe.”
Left-wing Labour MP Richard Burgon said “blame for Labour’s defeat lies squarely with Keir Starmer and his clique”.
In a post on X, he said: “They put factional interests over having the candidate best placed to win, Andy Burnham. If Labour is to be the “Stop Reform” party, then the leadership must stop treating progressive voters with contempt – and start appealing to them.
“That means a return to real Labour values – through policies like a Wealth Tax, public ownership of energy and water, and an ethical foreign policy that are all popular with the public.
“And it means ditching the approach of trying to ape Reform and kicking the left, that has alienated so many people who have voted Labour previously.”
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