An accounting system used by Post Office sub-postmasters before the controversial Horizon software was introduced is likely to have also been faulty, an investigation has found.

A report said “there was a reasonable likelihood” that the IT system, called Capture, could have created cash shortfalls in accounts.

Capture was used in branches from 1992 to 1999, prior to the Horizon software, which has been at the centre of the Post Office scandal.

Post Office minister Gareth Thomas said he was “horrified to learn” about the issues with the Capture system.

The Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) have appointed Elizabeth Passey as chair of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme’s (FSCS) board.

She succeeds Marshall Bailey, who is stepping down after two terms as FSCS chair, and will take up the role tomorrow (1 October).

Over a 30-year career, Passey has held senior positions with J Stern & Company, Investec Asset Management and Morgan Stanley.

She recently completed two terms as chair of the Rural Payments Agency and as convener of the University of Glasgow.

The appointment was made by the FCA board and the Prudential Regulation Committee (PRC) with the approval of HM Treasury.

The FCA’s senior independent director Richard Lloyd, who was on the selection panel said: “Elizabeth will bring a wealth of experience of financial services, public service and governance to the role and we look forward to working with her.

“I want to thank Marshall for his impressive leadership over the last six years, a period of significant change for the FSCS.”

FSCS embarks on operating model overhaul

Passey added: “I am delighted to be joining the FSCS as its new Chair. The FSCS provides trust in financial services, and this is arguably more important than ever.

“It is vital the organisation continues to provide a high-quality service that gives consumers the confidence to save and invest.

“Marshall and the FSCS’ board have directed the organisation through a significant change to its work, with a steep rise in complex claims over the last six years.

“I’m looking forward to working with the other directors and the executive team to help the FSCS continue its evolution as a compensation scheme, so that it can best protect consumers in the years ahead.”

Bailey said: “I have been proud to serve as chair of the FSCS over the last six and a half years, during which time we have significantly transformed the organisation.

“The levels of consumer protection have been more clearly defined, with the FSCS continuing to play an important role in UK society by providing robust protection for consumers of regulated financial services.

“The incoming chair will bring excellent experience to a group of dedicated executive leaders and board members, and I wish her every success.”

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Conservative leadership frontrunner Robert Jenrick has declared the UK must “get migration done”, warning the country cannot move on to discuss other pressing issues such as the economy, health or education until this “running sore” is tackled.

The issue of migration has dominated the Tory leadership contest so far, in which Jenrick is competing against Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat to replace Rishi Sunak and help rebuild the party after its historic defeat in the election in July.

The party’s annual conference in Birmingham has become a beauty parade for the four candidates, who will be grilled by members on the main stage over the coming two days, starting with Badenoch and Tugendhat on Monday. It will finish on Wednesday with back-to-back keynote speeches by the contenders.

Jenrick told a campaign breakfast rally on the fringes of the event that the European Convention on Human Rights was a “leave or die” issue for the party.

He claimed the convention was making it “impossible” to deport terrorists or remove “dangerous foreign criminals like rapists and murderers and paedophiles” from British streets.

“This is more than just ‘leave or amend’: frankly, our party doesn’t have a future unless we take a stand and fix this problem,” he said.

Having positioned himself on the right of the party, he is the only candidate in the race who is pledging outright to quit the ECHR, while both he and Tugendhat are vowing to introduce a cap on inward net legal migration.

Hardline stances on migration are likely to play well with the Tory members who will select the overall winner. On Monday, one Tory delegate on the floor of the main conference urged the party to “apologise and un-smear” Enoch Powell, who was ousted from the Conservative front bench over his notorious “rivers of blood” speech against inward migration to the UK in 1968.

The delegate, asking a question to the main stage, claimed that Powell’s speech had in hindsight been “quite a fair and accurate prediction” about migrants to Britain committing “heinous crimes” — and received a smattering of applause.

Earlier in the day, Jenrick said that migration was “taking up the oxygen in our political life today”.

Surrounded by supporters wearing “We want Bobby J” baseball caps, Jenrick said: “I want to settle this running sore . . . so that all of us in this party in our country can get on to talk about all the other things that drove me into politics, and drive all of us in public life, the environment, education, the health service, the economy.”

The contest for Tory leader will see MPs eliminate two more candidates, before the final pair are put to members in an online ballot, with a result announced on November 2.

Tory chair Richard Fuller said there would be “no change” to the timing, even though it means the new leader will not be in place to respond to the Budget delivered by chancellor Rachel Reeves on October 30.

Later in the day former security minister Tugendhat, regarded as the outsider in the Tory leadership contest, gave a spirited conference presentation that repeatedly referred to his combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tugendhat acknowledged his limited ministerial experience, but joked that he would not dwell on the lack of combat experience of his rivals: “They served in other ways,” he said. He said his rivals would have to “own their record” in office.

A centrist former Remainer, Tugendhat deployed messages to woo the Tory base including a promised legal annual migration cap of 100,000, lower taxes, and a lifting of the ban on new grammar schools.

The former intelligence officer, however, refused to accept that the party had to pursue the policies of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage: “My job is to reform the Conservative party, not to become Reform.”

Meanwhile, speaking at a fringe event, former prime minister Liz Truss described allegations that she had contributed to the decimation of the Conservative vote as “pathetic”.

Truss — who lasted 49 days as prime minister — suggested that the party would have done a lot better in the general election if she had still been at the helm, saying “when I was in Number 10, Reform was polling at 3 per cent, by the time we got to the election it was 18 per cent”.

BRITAIN’S only full-time nomads have told how they traipse around the country in a freezing cold tent patched with duct tape and plasters.

Mod, Tara and their German Shepherd called Dog, live full time in a “tatty” old tent all year round, picking up odd jobs to make money.

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In a recent video, shared to their YouTube channel @Log Hoppers, the couple said they’ve been living “undetected” for four months.

To warn them of passers-by, the couple have set up two makeshift doorbells, covering the main in-route zones to their set-up.

Both comprise of meandering knee-high wires with mousetraps attached at the end.

Pull or cut any of the wires and a loud snap sound will be triggered.

Mod said: “Instantly we know when someone’s walked through and the dog will alert us as well.”

He continued: “Just trying to make sure that if people are coming through, we’ve got an early warning sign to jump out and not be caught in our underwear, right?”

Inside the couple’s 3Fulgear tent they have reversible sleeping mats they can flip depending on the temperature.

They also use three-season sleeping bags, ideal for cooler nights.

Plus, all of their belongings fit comfortably in their large hydration rucksacks.

Tara laughed at the amount of holes their tent has accumulated over the years – but thankfully, they have a tarp over the tent top to protect them from the rain.

Although the couple previously worked full-time, they insisted they didn’t want to die in-between four walls.

So, they switched to nomad life 10 years ago.

To afford the nomadic lifestyle, the couple rely on odd jobs, or on occasion, they barter.

One odd job, is fitting insulation in homes, others include carpet laying and tiling.

Plus, Mod trained as a horticulturist which comes in handy.

Tara explained the couples work ethic: “We don’t require much money to live on so the way we fared our business in the first place with odd jobbing is to very much be affordable for clients.”

The only bill the couple need to pay is for their phones.

However, Tara admitted: “When our budget starts to get a little bit tighter we just rely on Wi-Fi.

“It’s easy to find Wi-Fi codes because when you have got money, attend these places like cafes, libraries all these different places get the codes and then you can literally just sit outside when you’ve got nothing at all, hook up and and there you are.”

Tara said there are times when they fear their lifestyle could deter others from buying their services.

She explained: “We were a bit worried that if people found out the way we live that they might tarnish us with a brush that we didn’t really deserve.

“We’re very committed to giving back as much as we can.”

When the couple aren’t working, they explore and forage, unless the weather is shocking, they always keep their 545 YouTube subscribers in the loop.

They hope their channel “sheds light on the idea that you can camp lowkey and it can be comfortable”, without added luxuries.

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I’ve written a lot about the politics of the labour left in the swing states, but these places aren’t just about that. States including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are some of the most politically heterodox in the country — that’s why, of course, they are swing states.

I was struck by some recent polling done by Blueprint, a left-leaning public opinion research initiative, that speaks to this point. As they put it, “swing state voters are ideologically eclectic: They hold conservative views on immigration and crime, but are pro-choice and favour government action to control corporate excesses, particularly on prices. They reward pragmatic populist positions rather than strict ideological consistency.”

They also “favour politics that punish corporate bad actors but are sceptical of government over-reach and sweeping systemic change rhetoric”. This point is particularly interesting because it indicates that Kamala Harris’s decision to target price gouging — which is politically astute but doesn’t take broader market forces into account — is still the right approach in swing states. Same goes for Harris’s stance on bringing down prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate with Big Pharma. 

Fifty-seven per cent of swing state voters believe that the criminal justice system isn’t tough enough. They want corporations to pay for their crimes, but they want individuals to be held to account too. This presents an opportunity for Harris — who, as a former prosecutor, is totally committing to seeing bad guys get their due. Given that swing state voters are also in favour of decreased immigration, I’d say there’s some room for her to lean into immigration reform and ensure the government is tough on unlawful entries.

Swing state voters are also deficit hawks. That makes a lot of sense to me, coming from the Midwest, where people tend to have Swabian attitudes around savings and thrift. Sixty-nine per cent of swing state voters believe in deficit reduction, though they also seem to be tolerant of more government intervention in markets (only 23 per cent agree that “Soviet-style price controls will only make inflation worse”.) That’s a paradox, of course, but it might be an opportunity for messaging around government efficiency versus spending.

As I wrote in a column a few months ago, red tape in both the public and private sector is rife. Growing up in Indiana, I’ve seen entire farms labelled wetlands after the wrong bird lands on a row of crops. I’ve seen factory owners have to rebuild entire operations because a certain kind of paint is outlawed. I’ve heard from US mining executives who tell me it will take them five to six years just to get a permit to open rare earth mineral facilities. And don’t get me started on the complexities of federal student aid forms or New York City building codes. 

The same goes for the private sector, too, of course — tackling rent-seeking by large, bureaucratic monopolies is something I’ve argued that Harris should lean into. That plays well to voters concerned about the cost of living (73 per cent of swing state voters say that lowering prices on consumer goods, gas, and services is their top economic priority).

I came away from this research thinking, more than I had before, that perhaps Harris’s somewhat vague, yet pragmatic approach on the economic front isn’t such a bad thing. She needs to capture people with a lot of differing viewpoints right now, and while more joined-up systems thinking will be necessary for making good policy should she win, heterodoxy might serve her well now.

Peter, in your travels through swing states, what are some of the points of political heterodoxy that you find most intriguing? And how do you see Trump and Harris playing to them?

Recommended reading

• This article in Foreign Policy lays out the two camps of China hawks in the Republican Party, and how they differ in their approach to dealing with the CCP threat. While I, too, am hawkish on China, I think it’s beyond folly to think that the US can effect regime change in China. America would do far better to focus on a strong, integrated industrial strategy at home, which secures supply chain resiliency, and plug the gaps in areas like shipbuilding, steel, chips, rare earth minerals and of course cutting edge technologies.

• This New Yorker magazine feature on Russian’s espionage war in the Arctic, is a rippin’ yarn of a feature about how the top of the world is becoming one of the most geopolitically charged places on earth.

• In the FT, see my column on how America, not just China, is increasingly perceived as a global risk node and don’t miss Lunch with Signal’s Meredith Whittaker, who has wise words about AI and the surveillance economy.

Peter Spiegel responds

Rana, I certainly agree with you that swing states are politically heterodox. And I may even be persuadable that Harris is right to be vague ideologically to reach the maximum number of persuadable voters in these key battlegrounds.

But I have an issue with the conclusions put forward by Blueprint because they seem to argue the opposite: that swing voters in these states share an identifiable set of issues and values that can be easily targeted by presidential campaigns. The reality is that the seven swing states are a motley group of regions, political histories and demographics that make any attempt to identify a prototypical “swing voter” on a national basis impossible at best and disingenuous at worst.

To oversimplify, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have been battleground states for decades because of their common histories as big, industrial centres that have drifted towards the Republican party for decades thanks to the cultural and trade issues that you’ve written so compellingly about, Rana. They are in play because of the so-called Reagan Democrats that Biden was able to win back in places like his hometown of Scranton.

Georgia and North Carolina are completely different beasts, though. They are moving in the opposite direction, from solid Republican to “in play” for Democrats. They are the “New South” that was once in lockstep with conservatives across the region but have seen an influx of highly skilled workers in places like North Carolina’s Research Triangle, or Atlanta’s burgeoning music scene, which has given them an increasingly cosmopolitan flavour — and a voting bloc that is going to be more supportive of globalisation than the swing voter in the industrial Midwest.

Finally, Arizona and Nevada are younger, western states with less of the historical baggage of the Midwest or New South and more of a libertarian streak. They are also moving from solid Republican to the centre because of the rise of skilled workers, but both have been shaped far more by immigration, with second and third generation Mexican-Americans playing an outsized role in changing their political make-up. Democrats thought they had the Latino vote locked down, but Republicans have proven newly resilient for some of the same reasons many immigrant groups gradually become more conservative over generations. These voters need a whole different set of issues addressed than the swingers in the Midwest and New South.

In sum, swing voters may be even more heterodox than you give them credit for, Rana. Still, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and Joe Biden) managed to win in many of these states with detailed economic visions and plans. We should expect the same from Harris.

Your feedback

And now a word from our Swampians . . .

In response to “What we should learn from Jimmy Carter”:
“Whatever you think of Carter and Reagan as presidents, when you think of them as people you fully realise how superior they are/were to Trump. We need decency regardless of policy, and Trump is a craven, disturbed person.” — Commenter Fan of FT

In response to “Dear Kamala: A letter from Pennsylvania”:
“Spend any time at all on a family dairy farm in Wisconsin . . . and what you are likely to find is a white, septuagenarian farm couple whose adult children have left the farm for opportunities in the city. This couple hasn’t had a vacation in decades, they have an $800,000 combine on which they owe a lot of money, they employ migrant labour (largely Hispanic) because no one wants to do the hard, dirty work of taking care of 200 dairy cows. Ask any farming community what they really think of immigrants and they will tell you their farms cease to exist without this labour force.

Enter the Democratic party which in the recent past has the effrontery to accuse this couple of benefiting from undeserved white privilege — and often accusing them of being racist to boot. This farm couple looks around their hard scrabble homestead, despairs at their pile of debt, laments they have no succession plan but auctioning off the herd and squint as they might, they can’t for the life of them see their privilege. I can’t really blame them for abandoning the Democratic party . . . The truth is, the Democratic Party has abandoned them.

Kamala would do well to address the shortcomings of the Democratic Party and answer the burning questions of this farm couple: What did we do wrong? Where is the social contract between government and citizens? Why do elements of your party accuse of me of inherited privilege when I’m poor and my way of life is disappearing seemingly month by month. Sure, we benefit from having the family farm passed down to us, and we weren’t brought to this country in involuntary servitude, but privilege? We aren’t coastal elites. We go to church. We work hard and play by the rules. And we might not want Donald Trump as our son-in-law but at least he doesn’t make us feel diminished.” — Steven C. Wallace