Politics
Labour On Course To Be Largest Party In A General Election, Dwarfing Reform
Labour is on course to be the largest party in a general election, according to a new poll, leaving Reform UK a distant second.
The More in Common think tank has predicted Labour would win 250 seats in a hung parliament – 76 short of a majority – if Brits were to head back to the ballot box now.
Reform UK would win 147, the Conservatives 125, the Liberal Democrats 63 and the Greens just three.
The major MRP survey, which polled more than 15,000 British adults, will be a welcome boost to Labour just before its annual party conference in Liverpool begins.
The poll suggested Andy Burnham’s leadership had transformed Labour’s electoral chances since replacing Keir Starmer in July.
More in Common carried out a similar survey three months ago and found Reform would win 293 seats and Labour just 110.
The think tank found 214 seat projections – 143 of them to Labour – have changed since Burnham got the keys to No.10.
Labour appears to be recovering in Scotland too, as the poll shows it would win 18 seats up from just five.
However, More in Common did predict the SNP would remain the largest party with 27 out of 57.
And Labour is evidently not out of the woods yet, being still 161 seats down from their July 2024 landslide victory.
The survey found nearly half of all seats (48%) would be won by fewer than five points, making it an incredibly marginal election.
Even so, the poll also suggest Burnham’s focus on devolution has helped win over voters as Labour’s support has moved away from London.
In July, 44% of Labour’s projected seats were in the capital, but that has now decreased to 21% due to a surge in the North East, North West and Wales.
Meanwhile, Reform is struggling due to the split in the right-wing vote as splinter group Restore Britain takes crucial support, possibly costing Farage dozens of seats.
UK director at More in Common, Luke Tryl, said: “On the eve of last year’s Labour Party Conference, our MRP projected Reform could get close to a three figure majority, while both Labour and the Conservatives dropped to below triple figures.
“Fast forward to today, and it is clear the electoral landscape has transformed dramatically with Andy Burnham as prime minister. “
Tryl continued: “But far from representing a return to politics as normal, volatility has become the new watch word of our electoral system.
“The model projects that almost half of the seats would be won on margins of less than 5 per cent, meaning small swings in either direction could see any of the Tories, Reform or Labour ending up on top.
“And while the Labour advantage in seats is comfortable even on these numbers, they would still be forced into a multi-party coalition or arrangement to maintain power.”
Tryl added that Burnham’s decision to rule out an early election “is a sensible one”.
He said: “While Labour is off its death bed, the party’s recovery is far from complete.
“To call a poll the prime minister would have had to be willing to risk the careers of scores of his colleagues including his chancellor and foreign secretary, while even small shifts in the current numbers would have left him vulnerable to having a stint in Downing Street only longer than that of Liz Truss.”
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Illustration by Tracy Worrall
4 min read
Lessons in political science. This week: options
Your starter for 10: what links by-elections over the last 100 or so years in Stockport, South Dorset, Walsall North, City of London & Westminster South, Lambeth Central, Croydon North West, Chesterfield, Newbury, Haltemprice & Howden, and Clacton?
The answer is they have, in date order, held the record for the most candidates standing in a by-election. Stockport in 1920 was a rare example of a by-election where both seats in a multi-member constituency were up for grabs, something that would never happen again before they were abolished in 1948. A full seven candidates stood, setting what was then a record. It took more than 40 years before that was achieved in a single-member constituency, in South Dorset in 1962.
The record stood until Walsall North in 1976 (nine candidates); we then had City of London and Westminster South in 1977 (10), Lambeth Central in 1978 (11), Croydon North West in 1981 (12), Chesterfield in 1984 (17), and Newbury in 1993 (19). We jumped to 26 candidates in Haltemprice & Howden in 2008 and then to the 34 in Clacton.
The general rise in candidacies is well known, from an average of 2.2 per constituency at the 1955 general election to a record 6.9 in 2024. But the rise is even more obvious at by-elections, from 2.7 candidates on average during the 1955 parliament up to 11 between 2019 and 2024. The extra publicity makes by-elections particularly attractive for fringe candidates, both the genuine and those from the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party as seen in Dunny-on-the-Wold.
The consequences are still to be understood. A new piece of research, just out in Party Politics, examines the strategic options the rise in candidates gives voters: the more candidates there are, the more options voters have, although not all candidates matter equally and not all parties gain equally.
Estimates of the amount of tactical voting are often misleading, because most voters don’t have the chance to vote strategically. Imagine you support Labour, who are in second place in your constituency, and your least preferred option, the Conservatives, are in first place; the Lib Dems, who would be your second preference, are in third place. If so, you don’t have a strategic option available.
What this research did was to try to look at the number of tactical options open to voters – and then work out how many of these options were used. To measure whether an individual has strategic choices, you need to know both how they rate the parties and how likely they perceived those parties were to win in their constituency. (Some of these perceptions will be wrong but it only matters whether the voter thinks they have a strategic option.)
Drawing on data from the last four general elections, the research found that 28 per cent of voters had the chance to vote strategically, peaking in 2024 at 36 per cent. So, even with all those candidates, most people still did not have the chance to vote tactically. But of those who had a strategic option, more than a third (39 per cent) cent took it – a figure that rose to more than half (51 per cent) in 2019.
By definition, as the article notes, strategic options tend to be one of the larger parties – “to be a strategic option, a candidate must be viable or at least more viable than the first-choice party”. Hence what matters is not the number of candidates per se but the number of places where their candidacies look plausible; so what has really changed things has been the rise in candidacies by the Greens and Reform UK.
To date, the main beneficiaries of this have been the more established parties. Over those four elections, Labour gained the most (some 55 per cent of all strategic voters), followed by the Tories (23 per cent), and smaller parties lost out; nearly half of all strategic voters in this analysis actually preferred the Greens. But saying that this happened in the last four elections – in which Labour was not in government – is not the same as saying it will continue.
Further reading: E Fieldhouse and J Fisher, From strategic voters to strategic options: Recasting strategic voting for multiparty simple plurality elections, Party Politics (2026)
(© David Levene/Guardian/eyevine)
13 min read
Reformed Blairite, longtime director of pressure group Compass and co-founder of new Labour group Mainstream Neal Lawson talks to Sienna Rodgers about his role in Andy Burnham’s rise and the political journey that brought him to this point
Neal Lawson was working for Gordon Brown when he first met Andy Burnham, then a 20-something Blairite advising Tessa Jowell. It was the 90s and they were fellow members of Demon Eyes, the amateur football team set up by young Labour advisers and named after the famous Tory poster portraying a devilish Tony Blair.
The squad included future Cabinet ministers Ed Balls and David Miliband, as well as journalists and backroom staff well-known in political circles – Tim Allan, Dan Corry, Liam Halligan, Phil Collins, David Goodhart and James Purnell, today Burnham’s chief of staff.
Though Lawson and Burnham got on well, they were not especially close; it was from a distance that Lawson watched the subsequent adventures of his ex-teammate with interest, through his campaigning on Hillsborough to leaving Westminster for the Manchester mayoralty. The pair only recently reunited.
“At his last mayoral election, we started chatting about ideas for his manifesto,” Lawson recalls. “He called and we talked through some policy ideas, and it started dawning on me… ‘He’s the standout person. It’s inevitable that Starmer fails, and it’s probably inevitable that the Labour Party will turn to Andy Burnham.’ And I thought, ‘Let’s try and help him get there.’”
He helped Burnham, he says, “with platform, polling, policy, organisation”. In May 2025, the mayor spoke at a big Compass conference, alongside Miatta Fahnbulleh and Louise Haigh (both now Cabinet ministers).
The context is that Lawson had decided back in the run-up to the 2020 leadership election that Keir Starmer was not his man. Soft-left figures like the director of Compass were being collected as useful allies when he was called in by Steve Reed and Morgan McSweeney to meet their candidate. But Lawson was not impressed. “This man is completely uninterested in ideas,” he concluded. “He can’t be the leader.”
While Starmer had to do without Lawson’s vote (he spent two weeks on the Clive Lewis campaign and cast his ballot for nobody), he did, of course, nab Labour’s top job. It led to an era that deeply frustrated Lawson, who felt he had been duped by McSweeney.
“He sat in that chair an awful lot,” says Lawson, pointing to my seat in his London flat-turned-office. The party organiser who masterfully engineered Starmer’s rise had spent a couple of years courting Lawson, drawing out his political ideas over the dining table.
“It made sense to me that he said his project was Corbynism without Corbyn – let’s get rid of the antisemitism, let’s professionalise it, but the underlying facts of the 2008 crash, austerity, the composition of the electorate means that we’ve got to do something like Corbynism.
“Little did I know he was just an undercover, like the cops who join Greenpeace or CND. He was there to understand how the left thinks, in order to replicate it in a way that he could win an election.”
So, he does not believe there was any genuine intellectual curiosity there? “No, it was a complete and utter – ironically – entryist job. It was the ‘Morgan tendency’ – to infiltrate a group of people, understand how they operate and bend it to your will,” Lawson replies. “As soon as you’ve won it, you kick the ladder away, shut the door and start pouring boiling oil over the people who’ve just voted for you.”
Does he think Starmer was in on the plan, or merely a passenger? “I think he was just thinking about Keir and what was good for Keir, and this was good for Keir.”
Lawson today describes himself in no less scathing terms than a Corbynite on social media might use against him: “Neal Lawson, the most naive person in left-wing politics.”
With Burnham, a leader he did back, now in No 10, for some on his wing of the party the question arises: has the most naive person in left-wing politics been duped again?
Lawson, 63, comes from what he calls a “comfortable working-class” family: his mum worked in a shoe shop; his dad was a printer in Fleet Street; they owned their own home in south-east London, and he was the first child in his class to go on a foreign holiday.
His father was also father of the chapel, a powerful member of printing union Sogat. Lawson proudly notes that his dad negotiated a four-day week before anyone else had it, and remembers fondly his support for the miners, with Sogat sending money, resources and food.
“Our phones were definitely tapped,” Lawson says.
He struggled academically – “I’m pretty sure I’ve got dyslexia” – so was sent to a technical school despite his love of ideas and language. He left with “virtually no qualifications” and found himself working in a book-pulping factory, where he could pick out books destined for recycling from a conveyor belt.
At 18, he returned to education, starting with A-Levels at a college, followed by Trent Polytechnic. It had taken some convincing. “I was a class-warrior kid: ‘I’m not going to university – they all wear duffle coats, and they’re all Tories.’” His parents, who left school at 15, sent for a neighbour who’d been to university to talk to him about why he might like it.
There, Lawson encountered an outpost of Frankfurt School lecturers who introduced him to Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Antonio Gramsci and Zygmunt Bauman (who became his “intellectual guru”). His Marxist education was compounded by his surroundings: “I was in Nottingham during the miners’ strike. If you wanted a lesson in hard-class politics and the brutality of the British state, that was it.” And when he was not on those picket lines, he was at home, on those in Wapping.
Fittingly, his first job was as a regional political organiser for a union – the Transport and General (T&G, today’s Unite) in Bristol. But Militant’s role in left politics meant, while finding Tony Benn himself “mesmerising”, Lawson ended up organising against the Bennites.
“If you were a young socialist, you were grabbed by Militant,” he explains. Recounting his very brief flirtation with the Trotskyist group, he recalls being invited to a Marxism weekend conference: “I’m thinking, fucking hell, this is the answer to everything!” Yet he quickly decided he was against Militant’s “lying cheating entryism – I don’t like that in any form”.
His job at T&G was to ensure “the right candidates” were selected for the 1992 election. One of the MPs sponsored by the union was Gordon Brown, whom Lawson was then invited to work for during the campaign and full-time once he became shadow chancellor.
“I love Gordon dearly, and we still talk,” Lawson says, but goes on: “There is a big cultural difference between the way Gordon does politics and the way I do politics. Gordon is brilliantly tactical, focused laser beam… I’m much more, ‘What’s the big picture here? What’s the big vision of where we’re trying to go?’”
By then, Lawson had a family and needed money. Looking to spread his wings, he settled on lobbying. “I didn’t even know what public affairs or lobbying was, but it seemed to be the thing that people did.” He came across the outfit of Tim Bell – best-known as Margaret Thatcher’s spin doctor, and later a Tory peer – and it was, bizarrely, here that Lawson went next.
“Andy has taken a particular path since Makerfield, with people who were anti-him not that long ago, who are now supposedly very pro-him”
“I’m in Mayfair, having coffee with someone, and there’s literally a butler who walks in with white gloves and pictures of Mrs Thatcher on the walls. I’m just thinking, again naively but in a curious way, ‘This is fantastic.’ I don’t mean ‘I aspire to this’. This is like, ‘I didn’t know this world existed’,” Lawson says.
“I’m a working-class boy from south London who is then being paid quite amazing amounts of money, and your feet leave the ground. All of a sudden, you’re dining in very plush restaurants, talking to all of these different people, and you’re wearing cufflinks.”
His chain-smoking boss would “preach a politics of Thatcherism and practise a politics of socialism”: “He took care of everyone. He was lovely to anyone. I did some terrible things to him.” Lawson refuses to say which things.
This path led him to ‘lobbygate’. Alongside Ben Lucas and Jonathan Mendelsohn, Lawson had left Bell to set up his own lobbying firm, LLM Communications, but quickly found himself embroiled in scandal when an undercover journalist caught them making inadvisable promises of government access to clients.
While he used his knowledge to advise clients, Lawson says, “I never used my connections, so I was a pretty awful – in that respect – lobbyist. I just thought it was too awkward and difficult.”
The journalist posing as a client was repeatedly asking for a meeting, he claims, and ultimately he remembers “getting so worn down, and going, ‘I can probably get you a fucking meeting’. And that’s the story. That’s my fault and I was naïve”. It was exposed by the Observer in an “embarrassing” and “awful” episode.
The company survived and eventually thrived, but Lawson describes lobbygate as an “eye-opener”: “That’s the moment I stopped wearing a tie and cufflinks.”
Lawson was an early enthusiast for New Labour – “I thought the Labour Party needed to be modernised and changed” – and even did a stint with Peter Mandelson, working on strategy in the 97 Millbank operation.
“Jesus, God, what a brilliant organiser!” he says of the ‘Prince of Darkness’ who recently became darker still. “I was never that particularly close to him, but I could see why people were impressed.” (Asked later whether he feels sorry for Mandelson, Lawson says yes, explaining: “I’m on the soft left – I’m quite soft emotionally as well as politically.”)
But soon after their seismic win, Lawson started questioning it all: “Is this taking us in the right direction? Is this a left project or is it a cover for not? I get disappointed really quickly.”
He and other critical friends came together to start Compass in 2003. “We started off as New Labour’s best friends but then they tried to do commercialisation of schools, the Iraq War, privatise the Post Office, all of that.”
Lawson had successfully stopped the privatisation of the Post Office while working under Bell, co-ordinating Alan Johnson and the CWU and undermining the proposal from within the Conservatives. “It’s the only time privatisation under the Tories was ever stopped.” When New Labour attempted to part-privatise the Royal Mail, “I worked with the CWU again and stopped it again. Instead of being New Labour’s critical friend, we were just critics.”
Ahead of the 2005 election, Lawson considered securing a parliamentary seat. He was on a train, on the way to a selection meeting, when he read an essay in Soundings by Marxist intellectual Stuart Hall – New Labour’s Double-shuffle. The party had taken to speaking with a “forked tongue”, Hall argued, and was “fundamentally neoliberal in character”.
“I just thought, fuck me, I don’t believe in this project. I got off the train, walked over the bridge, and got the next train back to London,” Lawson says.
Although he is clear about New Labour’s failures, the soft-left chief does characterise the era as one of vibrant discourse and undeniable talent. Finding himself in the middle of exciting debates between Jack Straw, Mo Mowlam and Philip Gould as well as Blair, Brown and Mandelson was invigorating.
Does he believe the level of talent we saw then is unmatched today? “Completely.” Why is that? “Because why would you go into politics now? You don’t get paid that much, you haven’t got that much influence, you’ve got complete exposure about who you are and what you’ve done. If you wanted to change the world, you’d start your tech company or your venture capital,” Lawson replies.
“The talent pool is really drying up, and that is a problem. Our analysis was the Blairites didn’t think a better world was desirable, and the Brownites didn’t think a better world was feasible. In the end, you ended up in the same place. But, my God, they were giants in terms of thinking, strategy and tactics.”
In 2011, Compass opened up its membership to other parties. The organisation’s Labour-only rule did not make sense, Lawson figured, when his political outlook was so similar to that of Caroline Lucas. “I believe everything she believes in and how you make politics happen,” he thought, and yet, “She can’t join Compass, but Peter Mandelson can. This is madness.”
The reaction was strong: “I hadn’t quite anticipated the tribal backlash of people in Labour. ‘You bastard! You’ve given up. You’re no longer one of us!’” But amid the rise of the internet and the multiplication of TV channels, he had long felt that the same fragmentation would come to politics too and Labour would not be able to remain “the only player”.
“I hate the coercive power of first past the post. I hate forcing people to do what they would not otherwise do. That’s a horrible politics,” says Lawson. “It can win big majorities on 34 per cent of the vote, but then it finds it can’t govern because you don’t have any real support in the country.”
Unless there is real change, he warns his comrades on the left, “The causes of Reform are going to keep growing, and they won’t be Reform. It will be Restore, or worse.”
Under the new Prime Minister, supporters of electoral reform are hopeful a major constitutional change is coming. But on other issues, there has been talk of the left of Burnham’s camp being jettisoned.
Asked for his thoughts, Lawson says: “Andy has taken a particular path since Makerfield, with people who were anti-him not that long ago, who are now supposedly very pro-him. We’ll see how that plays out…
“I think he’s gone for, I’d call it, a parliamentary Labourism route. We’re back to the same question of Labourism and the Labour Party, and is it the sole vehicle, and can you build a good society just through parliamentarism? Or do you need bigger ideas and bigger vision and bigger alliances and bigger movements? People will take shortcuts, and shortcuts never work.”
Lawson reasons: “There are never complete wins in politics.” But he is delighted that a prime minister has declared they want to roll back 40 years of neoliberalism.
“In many respects, job done. The bar has now been set at that level,” he says, noting that someone close to Corbyn once told him “they could never get him to say that” about neoliberalism. “We’ve got a prime minister who’s saying that. This is game on.”
So, he continues on “the long march”, believing that society “will go fascist right or it will go Neal Lawson/Compass”. “I’m joking,” he adds, although he isn’t really. “That will end up being the choice.”
Angela Rayner has rejected any suggestion of a split within the cabinet hours after she openly criticised Shabana Mahmood’s immigration plans.
The housing, communities and local government secretary condemned the home secretary for “changing the goalposts” and making it harder for foreign social care workers to live in the UK permanently.
Mahmood has increased the amount of time foreign social care workers need to spend in the UK from five years to 15 years for everyone who has come to the UK since 2021.
Speaking to The Times shortly before the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, Rayner said she stood by her previous criticisms that these changes are “un-British”.
Rayner said: “Especially in regards to the carers, who were asked to come to this country to care for some of our most vulnerable and then we changed the goalposts years down the line, I think that’s very disruptive.
“I do have concerns about that … when you ask someone to come here and look after your most vulnerable and they spend years dedicating themselves, moving their lives here to look after our loved ones.”
However, Rayner told Sky News’ Sunday Morning show that Mahmood had a consultation on the transitional arrangements.
“She’s been really clear we have to have a fair system that is fair for people who contribute today and for the people who come to this country to contribute,” the minister said.
“I have absolute support for Shabana in that and I’m sure she’ll come to a good conclusion on that.”
She added: “We’re all united. We’ve seen on illegal migration those figures coming down so I think she’s doing a fantastic job, so there’s no split story there unfortunately.”
Asked by host Kate McCann if “collective responsibility is dead”, Rayner said: “No. The prime minister was clear, we are going to do politics differently. And that means reaching out to other politicians as well, having that conversation.”
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Saturday Night Live kicked off its 52nd season this weekend with a spooky season twist on President Donald Trump (played by James Austin Johnson)’s relationship with White House aide Natalie Harp (played by Ashley Padilla).
In the middle of a meeting between Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (played by Ramy Youssef) at Gracie Mansion, the president is alerted that someone is here to see him.
“What reckless lunatic would travel to see me in this kind of weather?” Trump asks in the sketch.
Harp then stumbles in, drenched from the ongoing nor’easter storm battering the city as Trump asks what she’s doing in NYC.
Harp responds that she “ran here from DC ‘Weapons’ style” before imitating the run from the popular horror movie.
Trump in the sketch then remarks that Harp is like “the girl from ‘Obsession’ but blond.”
“Anyways, nice to meet you, Mayor Mamdani,” Harp says in the sketch.
“If you hurt him, I will end you,” Harp says in the sketch, pulling Mamdani in close.
Watch more of the “SNL” cold open below:
As the summer blends into autumn, and the days get shorter and darker, we’ve reached that stage of the year when loads of our favourite reality shows are up and running again, from Drag Race UK and Strictly Come Dancing to the Great British Bake Off.
But let’s face it, there’s one that’s about to blow them all out of the water.
The castle doors to The Celebrity Traitors are now less than a week away from opening up again to another exciting group of famous faces from the world of film, music, sport and beyond.
And if last year’s run is anything to go by, we’re in for some more TV gold.
While exact details of the series are being kept under wraps for now, the cast have slowly been teasing how they’re feeling about it all in interviews conducted before the action officially got underway.
To help prepare for what promises to be another gripping season, here’s a selection of what the new cast members have had to say about The Celebrity Traitors’ return…
Claudia Winkleman has claimed the new crop of contestants on The Celebrity Traitors are absolutely in it to win it
“They excelled at the missions,” Claudia Winkleman enthused, praising the group’s “amazing teamwork” and the fact they “just really wanted to build the prize pot” for their chosen charities.
Speaking more generally about the cast, she told the BBC she “couldn’t get over” the calibre of celeb contestants when she was first told about the cast.
“My bosses had to repeat the names at least three times,” she claimed. “We’re so lucky they said yes.
“Everyone taking part is fantastic. We are honoured they wanted to play the game.”
She also reckons the presence of so many comedians on the Celebrity Traitors line-up means we’re in for some real laugh-out-loud moments
BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge
Following Alan Carr’s victory this year, The Celebrity Traitors has brought together some of the biggest names on the comedy scene right now, from James Acaster, Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan to Joe Lycett and Joanne McNally.
“They all made me laugh,” she admitted. “They are all utterly brilliant and the funniest people on earth.”
As for any scene-stealers to look out for, she teased that Rob Beckett “said something that made me hide in a bush until I composed myself”.
For James Acaster, though, all of those comics in the Celebrity Traitors castle gave him cause for ‘concern’ before the game had even started
“[That is] a concern,” he revealed. “There will be suspicions that it’s going to be at least one of these guys, that we might form an alliance if we’re not broken apart.”
James speculated: “I think we’re going to be the first ones under the magnifying glass being looked at. Particularly at the beginning when you have absolutely nothing to go on.
“And then, you consider that a comedian won last year with Alan Carr disarming everyone with jokes the whole time. He has tainted us all!”
“Hannah Fry [mathematician and fellow Celebrity Traitors star] will probably tell you that probability-wise, there’s most likely to be at least one comic chosen as a Traitor because there’s enough of us,” he went on to theorise. “Even though it could, obviously, easily be three people who aren’t comedians…
“I don’t know how it works out, but if maths turns against us we’re in big trouble.”
BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/BBC Creative
If you were wondering how Romesh Ranganathan’s friendship with Rob Beckett is going to affect his Celebrity Traitors gameplay… so is he, apparently!
“Rob is one of my best friends, and we’ve worked together for a decade now,” Romesh explained. “But I still won’t be able to trust [him]. I mean, he’s just as easily going to be on my side as he is going to twist the knife in my back given the opportunity.”
He revealed: “ It’s going to be a weird thing where normally when we’re doing Rob And Romesh vs., we’ve got each other’s backs and are helping each other out. Whereas this time, he can’t be trusted.”
So, could Romesh see himself stabbing Rob in the back?
“In a heartbeat, yeah,” he quipped. “Yeah, I think I would. It’s all fair in Traitors, isn’t it?”
Joe Lycett reckons we could be about to discover a very different side to him on The Celebrity Traitors
Joe recalled: “When I started doing stand-up, my on and off-stage persona were quite similar. I showed off at parties because I wanted attention and then, gradually, as I got that attention through doing stand-up, I could calm down in real life.”
He continued: “When I’m not out on stage I’m very calm, thoughtful and peaceful. I think the comics know what I’m like on and off stage, but I think the others who, for the first time, will spend time with me not in ‘show mode’ might see that as suspicious.
“I definitely come across assumptions of ‘oh, he’s the gay comedian off the telly’ and I explain I’ve got a female partner and a son with said female partner. I’m really quite a tranquil individual when not in performance mode which may surprise some.”
BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/BBC Creative
The same goes for Myha’la, best known for her work as the ruthless Harper Stern in Industry
“I am nothing like Harper!” she insisted. “I’m more of a ‘kill them with kindness’ kind of girl rather than a blatantly bullish bulldog.”
Because of this, Myha’la admitted she had “very deliberately planned the looks that I’m wearing” to “really separate” herself from Harper, “and be seen as me and not that character”.
“I’ve got my jewelry; my hair is different. I’ve really, really, really planned this,” she claimed. “I just decided to make everything lighter, gentle, feminine. Everything is soft and knitted and cosy and entirely unlike her.
“There are no shoulder pads, I’m not wearing any suiting of any kind. I’m trying to position myself as far away from Harper as possible. It’s also an exercise in me being quiet, which is really hard. It’s like so about my personality.”
“I’ll be interested to see how this one goes because I feel like I will be battling Harper’s persona and the perception of her,” she mused, before admitting: “All that said, I want to be a Traitor. Obviously!”
BBC/Bad Wolf Productions/HBO/Simon Ridgway
The Celebrity Traitors marks Miranda Hart’s return to TV after an extended period out of the limelight due to her chronic illness
Asked what inspired her to sign up for The Celebrity Traitors, Miranda Hart explained: “My decision making in life generally – and certainly [with] work – is ‘follow the joy’.
“I haven’t done much TV work for a long time, having only recently come out of long-term ill health issues, and when I was offered this, my whole body sort of relaxed. I smiled, and I just wanted to jump about like a schoolgirl with joy. It’s just fun. It’s outdoors, it’s games. All the stuff I love. It’s play basically.”
The Miranda star disclosed that she’s “still living with elements of ME”, which can bring “fatigue and pain to manage”, but added: “I’ve come to a point where I feel well enough to step out, and that’s also partly why I’m doing this. The joy of mucking about on television again will hopefully outweigh some of the challenges.
“And I think it will be challenging on my body, so it’ll be interesting, and it’ll take some courage as this is a big next step.
“When you live with a chronic illness, it’s invisible, so people don’t know that you’re sitting there in pain. But then it reminds you that everybody’s got their thing.
“So, I’m also really looking forward to making friends and looking after each other and hopefully they can carry me up a hill or whatever we’re going to have to do!”
And there’s one cast member in particular who’s excited to be in the Celebrity Traitors castle with Miranda Hart
Bella Ramsey said: “There are some real fans of The Traitors in my family.
“Seeing the cast list come out, there are people that my sister is so excited about, people that we watched growing up together.
“I’m very excited to play with Miranda. Her show was so brilliant, and I just love her so that’s really exciting.”
Professor Hannah Fry was already applying her Maths skills to strategise before filming on The Celebrity Traitors had even started
BBC/Curious Films/Rory Langdon Down
The mathematician and author claimed she was “here to fulfil the nerd quota for the year”, a “responsibility” she insisted she was taking “extremely seriously”.
“Have I gone back through the data of all the previous games and tried to find statistically significant patterns? Yes!” she said. “Are any of these going to help me? Honestly, who knows?!
“There is a pattern in the way that Traitors behave. For example, Traitors often do a burn vote in the first few episodes when they’re settling in. By that, I mean they just vote for somebody that nobody else has voted for. Cat [Burns] last year was a really good example of this…
“But across the board, the only problem with picking up on those signals is that the Faithfuls are such an absolute mess. They are so all over the place that it’s really hard to pick out what the signal is. That’s just one example of a little bit of Maths that I’ve got in my back pocket.”
“Whether it’s going to work or not, honestly, your guess is as good as mine!” she confessed. “I’ve got spreadsheets coming out of my eyeballs. I close my eyes and it’s like there are numbers tattooed on the inside of my eyelids at the moment for how much I’ve been looking at them.”
Hannah added: “I definitely have a public persona of being someone who is smart. I would say, people tend to think I’m smarter than I actually am, bluntly, and I don’t think that’s going to serve me particularly well as I may be seen as a bit of a threat.
“I might actually try and chuck out a few false theories, so I’m seen to be a bit of an idiot and not a threat at all.”
Hannah Fry isn’t the only Celebrity Traitors cast member who was going in hard on the preparation beforehand, though
BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/BBC Creative
For Romesh Ranganathan, this prep included swotting up on “sports psychology books”.
“One of the things that I realised about this is the pressure really gets to you so that can throw your judgement off,” he suggested. “I want to remain completely cool and calm, so I’ve read some books about how to try and stay chilled in moments of pressure.
“I don’t really feel anything anyway, generally, but I think this is a specific thing.”
However, this is something he’s already found himself struggling with during his limited Celebrity Traitors experience.
Romesh recalled: “I was on The Jonathan Ross Show, and Joe Marler asked me if I was going to be on The Celebrity Traitors. I knew that I was, but I also knew that I couldn’t say. Even that felt really difficult.
“Up until that point, I thought I’d be alright at sort of lying, but now I don’t. That basically shook my confidence completely.”
As for Bella Ramsey, they already felt prepared when they got the call to join The Celebrity Traitors
“I’ve been playing a version of The Traitors since I was 10 years old when I joined The Television Workshop,” the two-time Emmy nominee claimed. “I’ve had game evenings and hosted them at my house and been to other’s evenings, so I’m familiar with the game.”
They enthused: “I love it so much, and that was really my reason [for taking part]. I was working on a production at the time of the last Celebrity Traitors – it’s called Maya which was filmed in Scotland, actually. We were all watching and so excited about it, and then we ended up playing a crew game.”
Bella continued: “I was playing a game as recently as two days ago. I was at my friend’s birthday, and we played.
“And a few weeks before that, I’d been hosting a game evening, so I’ve been playing it pretty regularly!”
“I do like games,” they continued. “I’m competitive to the level that I want to feel like I’ve done a good job. Not necessarily to win or triumph over others but to know I’ve played my best game. I feel the same about this. I want to stay in because I want to play the game. I just really enjoy it.”
BBC/Studio Lambert/Cody Burridge/BBC Creative
Similarly, Joe Lycett has been hoping to sign up for The Celebrity Traitors for a long time
“I’m going to say it – it’s the best show on TV,” the Bafta winner gushed. “The first series [of the regular Traitors] was just such phenomenally good television, and I didn’t think that it could be bettered, and then the celeb series came along
“The last episode was beautiful. That first year I sent a DM on Twitter, which was not responded to, to Studio Lambert to ask if they could send me all the rushes.
“I just was so hit by it and wanted more.”
He continued: “I am just thrilled to be part of the universe of The Traitors and to have been asked.
“I have no idea how to play it. I don’t think you can particularly. I think you just have to let it play itself a little bit.”
Romesh Ranganathan says that many of his loved ones will be surprised he said yes to The Celebrity Traitors
“A lot of my friends and family didn’t think I’d ever come on a show like this,” the comic said. “The truth is I didn’t think I would do this show because I really enjoy it.
“It’s one of those shows that’s a family event in our house, so we all sit down to watch it, and those things are few and far between now.”
“Contrary to popular belief, I do watch things and not ask to go on them!” he joked of his reputation for appearing on so many TV shows. “So, I was watching it, and we’re having a good time, and I’d never had any aspirations of being on the show, and then my youngest son was desperate for me to come on, so it’s kind of his fault.”
Miranda Hart is planning to bring one of her signatures to the Celebrity Traitors castle
She revealed: “When someone said on Instagram, ‘Oh, I hope you gallop in the castle’, I foolishly replied, ‘Right, I now take that as a dare’. So that was idiotic of me.
“I will have to at some point gallop down a corridor. I’ll gallop when no one’s watching…”
“Or who would be the best person to encourage to gallop? I don’t know,” she pondered. “I mean, Kenny probably doesn’t even know who I am. So, if I could get him to gallop… I could get a new generation galloping.”
Oh, and as for what we should expect from Claudia Winkleman in the fashion stakes this season…
“It went a little Artful Dodger for this series,” she teased. “I borrow a lot of the clothes and the shops/designers were horrified when I asked if we could dip the clothes in tea.”
Who is actually on the cast of The Celebrity Traitors season 2?
The full list of 21 celebrities on the line-up is as follows:
- Amol Rajan
- Bella Ramsey
- Professor Hannah Fry
- James Acaster
- James Blunt
- Jerry Hall
- Joanne McNally
- Joe Lycett
- Julie Hesmondhalgh
- Kenny Oghenovo “King Kenny” Ojuederie
- Leigh-Anne Pinnock
- Maya Jama
- Michael Sheen
- Miranda Hart
- Myha’la
- Richard E Grant
- Rob Beckett
- Romesh Ranganathan
- Ross Kemp
- Sebastian Croft
- Sharon Rooney
The Celebrity Traitors returns on Thursday 1 October on BBC One and iPlayer.
4 min read
The 18-34 age group looks ready to give Labour another chance.
Young adults have powered Labour’s electoral coalition for much of the past decade.
In 2024, 45 per cent of 18-34s voted Labour, but by the first half of 2026, the party’s support among young adults had fallen to 21 per cent. The Green Party overtook Labour, while Zack Polanski became the age cohort’s most popular political leader.
For Labour, this was more than a temporary problem. It raised questions about the future of an electoral coalition built partly on younger voters.
It is an issue we will explore further on Monday at our flagship Labour conference panel event in Liverpool: How can Labour win back Gen Z?
Our data shows signs that Burnham may quietly be starting to win back young people.
Many young adults turned away from Labour because they believed the government was failing on the issues that mattered to them. In June, 72 per cent of 18-34-year-olds said Labour had done a bad job reducing the cost of living, while 65 per cent said it had managed the economy badly.
Ipsos’ Economic Optimism tracker presents a similarly bleak picture. Economic sentiment among 18-34s in 2026 is as negative as at any point in recent decades, including during the 2008 financial crisis, the austerity years, and the post-pandemic cost-of-living squeeze.
Keir Starmer was also deeply unpopular. Between January and May 2026, his average net satisfaction rating among 18-34s stood at -51, placing him alongside Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch as one of the age group’s lowest-rated major political leaders.
The Green Party seized on this opportunity. Between January and May, the party averaged 33 per cent support among 18-34s, 18 points above its 2024 election result. Polanski also recorded a net satisfaction rating of +1, far ahead of the other major party leaders among young adults.
Labour’s position has improved since Starmer resigned. Across three subsequent Ipsos voting intention polls, the party has averaged 31 per cent support among 18-34s, ten points above its January-to-May average and level with the Green Party.
At the same time, Green support has barely moved. The aggregate figures suggest Labour’s recovery among younger voters may come partly from those who had considered Reform UK or the Liberal Democrats, rather than from voters returning directly from the Green Party, as well as those who had drifted away from Labour since 2024 but not found a new home.
Burnham also leads the other major party figures on personal ratings. Across Ipsos polling from July to September, he recorded an average net satisfaction rating of +7 among 18-34s, compared with -6 for Polanski. In August, half of young adults said they liked Burnham (25 per cent disliked him). By comparison, 38 per cent liked Polanski, and 37 per cent disliked him.
Part of Burnham’s appeal may simply be that he is not Starmer. But presentation definitely matters too.
Direct-to-camera videos, online trends, and influencer collaborations make his social-media output feel native to TikTok and Instagram rather than adapted from television or print. Savvy young Labour TikTokers have amplified that approach through fan edits and other promotional content.
The electoral effect is difficult to measure. But the strategy distinguishes Burnham from the Starmer government and allows Labour to enter younger voters’ feeds in a less formal political voice.
The Burnham government is barely two months old, and political honeymoons rarely last. Young adults will ultimately judge Burnham by what he delivers, not what appears in their feeds.
Expectations are high: 49 per cent of 18-34s expect a Burnham-led Labour government to look after young people’s interests. Housing, employment and student finance will provide lasting tests. Labour must also rebuild its youth vote without weakening the broader electoral coalition it needs to govern.
Labour has recovered ground, but 31 per cent would still match its weakest election performance among young adults since 2010. Ipsos’ How Britain Voted data, stretching back to October 1974, shows Labour recording a similarly low share at only two elections: 1983 and 2010.
Burnham has regained young voters’ attention. Now he must give them a reason to stay, beyond the reels.
Ben Roff is Senior Research Executive at Ipsos
Victory in the Holborn by-election may mislead Burnham into thinking he is doing just fine
Andrew Gimson
Labour is running a content-free campaign in North London, and has found a candidate with an enchanting smile, but shows no sign of recognising that tough decisions about welfare reform will be needed in order to win back the North of England from Reform UK.
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They aren’t always very democratic or terribly liberal but see themselves as terribly nice – but what are they for?
Giles Dilnot
Gathered in Brighton two years on from the best result they’ve had those 72 MPs and many local councillors are starting to ask the question of themselves: What is the point of the Liberal Democrats, what are they for? And is it time to look elsewhere for leadership of their party?
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The Tories are back. Please don’t blow it
Oliver Dean
But we mustn’t let that optimism cloud our judgement. If we take the foot off the pedal now, this will have all been for nothing. This is a party that has existed for close to two centuries, and, over the last 18 months, we have teetered on the edge of political extinction far more than I would have ideally liked. If we relax now, we risk that future.
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It’s a long shot, but this is how Conservatives and Reform could still cooperate
Peter Franklin
I’m making a big assumption that Reform is interested in mutual benefit. It’s equally possible that they haven’t given up their ambition to kill us off — or that their primary objective at the next election is to replace us as the official opposition. In which case, they need to know that if they want all-out-war we will give it to them.
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Are the Lib Dems coming for the Tory heartlands?
John Oxley
The Lib Dem conference may have been a third-order news story, but its message should still matter to the Conservatives. We continue to be squeezed from both sides of the electoral spectrum, and we don’t have the luxury of picking which opponent to fight.
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More – not fewer – people should pay income tax
Miriam Cates
There will be a reckoning, whether by virtue of an economic catastrophe, war or a bond market crisis. Such a calamity could be avoided if the Prime Minister, guided by the long-term best interests of our nation, rather than the short-term demands of his political base, took decisive action to cut spending and incentivise growth. I for one am not holding my breath.
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The Bank of England has lost the plot on inflation
John Redwood
The recent exchange of letters does not instil confidence in their policies and shows no understanding of the role domestic policies have played in driving prices higher. Once again they leave us well above the target they are meant to hit. Policy meanwhile drifts and the Chancellor fails to take action to rein in the cost of living pressures on a large enough scale to have a useful impact.
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How the Local Government Association won over Reform UK
Harry Phibbs
I have asked all English local authorities, via a Freedom of Information request, for details of any efficiency savings in the past year due to LGA advice. None of them could think of a single one.
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Britain doesn’t need to be everywhere but it does need to matter somewhere
Joel Hetherington
A navy that can’t keep one destroyer’s water system working through a routine deployment is not one that can generate its own carrier escort, let alone in the Euro-Atlantic and project into the Indo-Pacific. That gap will only be closed by matching ambition to reality in the one theatre where our contribution cannot be replaced.
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Immigration reform must go beyond small boats
Blake Stephenson
As Parliament debates the Immigration and Asylum Bill, we must look beyond the immediate headlines and address the wider weaknesses that continue to undermine public confidence. The objective should not simply be to respond to today’s pressures, but to build an immigration system that is sustainable, trusted and fit for the decades ahead.
The post Our top ten picks of the week appeared first on Conservative Home.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Not Christmas, silly – Halloween!
While, sure, Christmas is a holiday to spend with family and being the cosiest you’ve ever been, Halloween is a time to dress up, get silly, and make your home look like a living nightmare.
Should you be hoping to save money on decorations this Halloween, Cricut has a ton of DIY Halloween decoration ideas to make on its machines – and honestly, it couldn’t be easier.
But, if you’re going all-out for Halloween this year, you’re in luck: ready to buy decorations have never been better.
Whether you’re going for a witchy and cobwebby Halloween, or to evoke a zombie apocalypse, there is an inflatable or animatronic out there for you.
We’reofficially in spooky season, so we’ve rounded up the very best Halloween decorations to shop now to get your house prepared… if you ever can be.
Despite popular perceptions of the ageing process, some research has found that improvement in either physical or mental health in later life is not only possible, but common.
One 12-year study found almost half of the 11,000+ seniors participating either got faster at walking (linked to better outcomes in older age) or performed better in cognitive tests more than a decade after their 65th birthday.
Which begs the question: can individual habits make improvement, or decline, more or less likely?
Of course, some conditions and health concerns are beyond people’s control. But speaking to HuffPost UK, endocrinologist Dr William Hsu, chief medical officer at L-Nutra, said there are a few habits which “consistently stand out”.
What habits separate those who improve with age from those who decline?
1) They don’t treat decline as inevitable
The study we talked about earlier found that typically, people who had a more positive view of ageing were more likely to see improvements after 65.
So, perhaps it’s not a surprise that Dr Hsu said: “One of the most important things I have observed is that the people who become healthier with age do not treat decline as inevitable.
“They pay attention to what their bodies are doing, make intentional changes, and measure whether those changes are working.”
2) They build and protect muscle
Strength training is a great way to protect your joints, muscles, and bones as you age, thus preventing the risk of falls and fractures.
And, Dr Hsu told us: “Muscle is not only important for strength and mobility. It is one of the body’s primary sites for glucose disposal and plays a central role in metabolic health.
“The people who remain strong as they age tend to prioritise resistance training, adequate protein, and regular daily movement.”
The expert added that challenging yourself with bigger weights or more intense workouts as you progress is key here.
3) They look at their overall health trends, rather than focusing on one isolated number
Dr Hsu said that people who improve with age usually “know their blood pressure, fasting glucose, hemoglobin A1C, cholesterol, waist circumference, and body composition, and they pay attention to how those markers change over time”.
That way, he stated, they can focus on their body’s overall trends rather than trying to rely on one specific marker.
“A result can fall within the ‘normal’ range while still moving in the wrong direction. The trajectory often tells us more than one snapshot,” he said.
4) They eat a lot of plants – and don’t overdo the protein
Diets rich in fruits, veg, nuts, pulses, beans, whole grains, and legumes and lower in processed and sugary foods and red meat have long been associated with a longer, healthier life.
“These foods support glucose regulation, cardiovascular health, the gut microbiome, and healthy ageing,” said the doctor.
And while you might have heard that protein is key for good health, the expert revealed: “The healthiest older adults consume enough protein to preserve muscle, but they do not allow a singular focus on protein to displace the plants and fiber that provide broader metabolic benefits.”
Indeed, one study found that too much protein seemed associated with negative health effects among sedentary older people.
“The point is not to minimise protein but to get enough of the right amino acids from plants, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains, with fish or a modest amount of other protein where appropriate, so that muscle has the building blocks it needs without overshooting into growth signalling that accelerates ageing,” Dr Hsu clarified.
5) They’re smart about giving their body breaks
“Exercise is one example: the body becomes stronger in response to a manageable stress followed by adequate recovery,” the doctor said.
“Nutrition may also be structured this way,” he continued, pointing to the fasting mimicking diet (FMD), which has been shown to lower people’s biological age.
To be clear, Dr Hsu said, “this is not about chronically restricting food”.
“It is about using a defined, time-limited intervention and then returning to nourishing, sustainable eating,” he said.
Bear in mind, though, that not everyone is suited to this eating style. Frail, breastfeeding, or pregnant people, as well as those with some health conditions or who are on regular medications, are advised to avoid the pattern; speak to your doctor if you’re not sure.
And going too long without food (16-18 hours a day) is linked to a higher risk of gallstones. Longevity expert Dr Valter Longo said a 12-hour fasting/eating split is “very common among people who have record lifespans”, and “seems to match both science and tradition”.
6) They keep their brains busy
“Attention and cognitive capacity benefit from use. People who remain mentally engaged tend to keep learning, maintain meaningful relationships, protect their sleep, exercise regularly, and reduce the constant digital interruptions that fragment attention,” added Dr Hsu.
“The brain responds to many of the same inputs that support the rest of the body, particularly movement, metabolic health, sleep, and social connection.”
Reading and engaging with challenging brain puzzles have been associated with a lower dementia risk, while maintaining great relationships can help you live longer overall.
“Healthy ageing,” the doctor ended, “is not simply the absence of deterioration. I have seen people gain strength, improve blood sugar and cholesterol, reduce visceral fat, and become more physically capable later in life. The body retains a meaningful capacity to adapt.
“The goal is to give it the right inputs, assess the response, and continue adjusting over time.”
When Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were murdered with a hatchet in their Massachusetts home in 1892, the 32-year-old became the prime suspect.
Although Lizzie was later acquitted of her crimes, the case has continued to fascinate people, and is still being discussed more than a century later.
Now, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Netflix anthology series, Monster, has brought Lizzie’s gruesome story to the forefront yet again – albeit with some creative license applied.
Starring Ella Beatty alongside Charlie Hunnam and Rebecca Hall, true crime fans have been tuning in to watch the fourth iteration of Monster, which explores themes of female rage and repression, in their droves.
But how did the Monster team go about bringing The Lizzie Borden Story to the small screen in all its gore-filled glory?
Here are 19 behind-the-scenes facts you probably didn’t know about Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’s creation…
Everyone involved felt like season 4 was the right time for a female lead in Monster
After seasons following Jeffrey Dahmer, Lyle and Erik Menendez and Ed Gein, Monster’s showrunners felt like it was time for a woman to take centre stage.
“[It] just felt like we owed it,” co-creator Ian Brennan told People in August. “We’d sort of over-indexed on men for the series, and it just felt like this was the right time and the right subject to look at to look squarely at the idea of female rage.”
It didn’t take long for Lizzie Borden to emerge as producers’ top choice when looking at women they could hook a season of Monster on
After the team decided they wanted a woman to lead season four, they soon discovered they had a smaller pool of female killers to select from.
In the end, Ian said that he and his collaborators wound up settling on Lizzie Borden because, while she is “enigmatic as a historical figure” and the case of her family’s murders is infamous, little is really known about the woman herself.
“When we began to dig into the research, I was just immediately taken with how much I felt for her and how much I got why she did what she did,” he recalled.
“There was something that was really, really, very likable about her as a person despite the crime that I think she likely committed because she was sort of a caged animal.”
He added that Lizzie was a “product of a time [when] it was really difficult to be a young woman”.
There was a good reason why Elizabeth Báthory and Aileen Wuornos were also chosen to appear in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
The third season of Monster, The Ed Gein Story, jumped back and forth in time, connecting the killer to Nazi Ilsa Koch and the actor Anthony Perkins, who played a character inspired by Ed Gein in Psycho.
Similarly, while the fourth series of Monster centres mostly on Lizzie Borden, it does also feature two notorious female killers from very different eras.
The Lizzie Borden Story links its central figure, who was born in the 1800s, with Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century noblewoman nicknamed the Bloody Countess, and Aileen Wuornos, a serial killer who murdered seven men between 1989 and 1990.
Ian felt that incorporating these two women into the story added a “third dimension”, telling People: “It just made it come alive all the more.”
Ella Beatty has also explained why the two unconnected murderers make an appearance in the series.
“The show is exploring a legacy of female rage and reaction to the set of circumstances that they are presented with,” Ella told Tudum, adding that the showrunners were keen to explore how female rage connected Aileen and Lizzie.
“Every season of Monster has been an exercise in understanding the person’s psychology. Are they born or are they made?” she added. “I knew from the beginning that Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan were really interested in exploring what brings a woman to the point of violence.”
Co-creator Ian also highlighted the idea of female rage when talking about the show’s multi-generational subplots.
“We were able to look at rage, female rage, and women who kill as less of an aberration throughout time than actually a throughline and an aspect of our species and existence in society,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in September.
“The cages that we put women in and the things they will do to get out of those cages was really interesting.”
Sarah Paulson’s performance as Aileen Wuornos had the show’s director in tears on set
Regular Ryan Murphy collaborator Sarah Paulson was chosen to star as the real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
“She’s an unbelievable actor who does so much preparation and physical work. It was my first time working with her and I was stunned by what happens when she comes out on set,” director Max Winkler told The Hollywood Reporter.
“My favourite scene that she did – because it really allowed her to improvise a lot – was the scene with her having her final meal,” the director admitted, revealing he cried when watching her perform Aileen’s sentimental last moments. “Just the mixture between protective strength and unbelievable vulnerability,”.
Sarah also already had a working relationship with Ella, having previously acted with her in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play Appropriate, for which she won a Tony Award.
“We met doing a play together three years ago and became very close. She was such a part of the creative process for me from the very beginning,” Ella enthused to Tudum.
The Monster team knew almost immediately when they had found their Lizzie Borden in Ella Beatty
“We cast a super wide net and nobody could do it until we saw her,” co-showrunner Ian told Tudum.
He added: “They say you can tell within the first five seconds if the actor has the role, and that was completely the case here, after watching very good actresses try.”
Ella Beatty was already hard at work on her characterisation before she’d even been cast
The actor – who is the daughter of Hollywood icons Annette Bening and Warren Beatty – immediately felt connected with Lizzie Borden when the project first came her way.
“I remember making the audition tape and thinking, ‘I understand this person’,” she told Variety.
“When I found out that I had gotten the part, I was over the moon and also really scared. I felt a huge responsibility to the part, to the anthology, to the real person,” she added.
“I think immediately I just wanted to start working on it. How does she move? How does she dream? How does she think? How does she speak? How does she blink?”
There was one key thing Rebecca Hall was keen to avoid when playing Abby Borden
Little to nothing is known about Abby Borden, other than the fact she was killed by her stepdaughter more than 130 years ago.
Played in Monster by Rebecca Hall, Lizzie’s stepmother is portrayed in the series as deeply unhappy, displaying cruelty toward her stepdaughter and frustration in her marriage.
This characterisation was largely created by the writers, due to how little has been recorded about Abby Borden.
“There’s very little about her out there, and I could already tell from reading the script that Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy had taken liberties and created a character that they were interested in for this show,” she told Collider. “So I felt like the only thing I could do was do the same thing,”
Rebecca admitted the lack of public information about her character gave her freedom to create something “unique and specific”, deliberately trying not to take inspiration from past depictions of “evil stepmothers” from fairytale lore.
Rebecca Hall was inspired by two Hollywood icons when deciding on her character’s voice
The Golden Globe nominee looked to Bette Davis and Joan Crawford to create Abby’s specific accent.
“When I was thinking about the accent, which I wanted to be not really from anywhere as much as just Abby, I kept thinking about those mid-Atlantic accents that actors created in the 1930s that didn’t actually exist but had this sort of affect of like, ‘I’m extremely posh and elitist’,” she added to Collider.
Monster’s showrunners weren’t ready to ‘say goodbye to’ Charlie Hunnam after season 3 – which is how he wound up being cast as Lizzie Borden’s dad
“We had such a great time working on the last season. It was just a joy,” Ian told People. “Charlie, you just can’t get enough of it. He’s so lovely and has such a great presence on set, and it just felt like, ‘Oh, this is perfect for him’.”
The showrunner was particularly impressed with Charlie’s range and ability to make any character sympathetic, no matter how evil they were.
“He just rounds out every character with this deep well of sympathy that really filled out what could otherwise be a stereotypical bad dad,” Ian added. “He really filled [the character] out in such beautiful detail.”
Like his co-star Rebecca, Charlie Hunnam felt liberated in playing a character that no one knows about in Monster season 4
While people already knew plenty about Ed Gein before Monster dedicated a season to him, comparably, the same could not be said for Andrew Borden.
However, this proved to be a positive thing for the actor playing him.
“[I was] liberated from the responsibility of playing a historical figure because there’s just not that much known, and so we were able to invent him to a certain degree,” Charlie told People. “It’s a real fertile playground for actors to come into this world.”
While there are no reports of Andrew Borden having had a stutter in real life, this was a trait that felt right to Charlie when he was reading the script.
“There’s one moment in the script that [the writer] wrote in that he sort of has a stutter, but it’s in a moment of sort of emotional duress,” he explained to CBR.
The Sons Of Anarchy actor explained that “that stutter in that voice just started to present itself to me” as he continued “running back” to the script and “exploring it further”.
Although set predominantly in Massachusetts, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story was filmed in different locations around the globe
The cast and crew of Monster couldn’t film the show inside Lizzie Borden’s real home, as the rumoured haunted house is now a bed and breakfast in Fall River, Massachusetts.
“I couldn’t believe that,” Monster co-showrunner Ian Brennan admitted about the discovery of the house’s new lease of life as a B&B. “It’s stunning.”
As a result, the scenes set in her house were actually filmed on a purpose-made set in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, the subplot involving Elizabeth Báthory was filmed in a castle in Rome, rather than Báthor Castle, where the countess lived in real life, about 170 miles from Budapest in a town called Nyírbátor.
“We had shot season four, most of it, in LA,” cinematographer Michael Bauman told CBR back in January. “But we have about five weeks of work [in] Rome. There are lots of castles here, and that’s mainly the reason [we filmed there].”
Vicky Krieps’ dual role casting in Monster season 4 was actually a last-minute choice
The team behind Monster loved Vicky Krieps so much in The Ed Gein Story, they cast her twice in the follow-up. She appears as both Bridget and Countess Elizabeth Báthory in season four of the anthology.
Vicky was chosen to play the rebellious maid who introduces Lizzie to hair dye and sex toys first.
“The way Ryan thought of it, she’s almost like a Mary Poppins that comes out of nowhere, who can be anyone from any time,” Vicky told Vanity Fair about Bridget. “Ryan said, ‘It’s women-driven, feminist, lesbian, dirty, unapologetic’.”
During filming, the show’s creator then offered her another role, as the bloodthirsty countess in the fantasy flashbacks.
“That was all shot in Italy, so we knew that that would be at the end of the schedule anyway, and we just couldn’t think of who would do it or who seemed right,” Ian explained to Tudum.
“It was Ryan’s idea. He pitched it to her and she loved it. Now it seems like such an obvious choice, but it actually came very late in the process.”
Vicky Krieps and Charlie Hunnam’s existing chemistry from the last iteration of Monster helped them push boundaries during filming of season 4
The new episodes of Monster reunited co-stars Vicky Krieps and Charlie Hunnam, who both starred in season three as Ilse Koch and Ed Gein.
Having worked together before, Vicky knew she could push Charlie in the scenes they shared.
“[We] joke a lot on set to make it fun or to just push each other in the scenes. Like, how far can we go? What can we do?” she told People at the New York City premiere last month. “We had a fight scene together, and he said, ‘You know, you can really go for it.’”
She recalled: “I’m saying, ‘But I’m really strong.’ He says, ‘That’s fine,’ and he’s really strong, so he doesn’t mind.”
Things escalated even further when Charlie fell to the floor, only for his co-star to spit on him.
“He gets up, he’s like, ‘What? What did you just do? You just spat on me. You can’t do that,’” she recalled.
Season 4 of Monster’s more comedic tone, in comparison to its predecessors, was an intentional choice
A miniseries about a young girl acquitted for the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother might not sound like a natural comedy, but Ryan Murphy wanted the tone of season four to be much lighter than Monster’s previous outings.
“I felt like the tone was slightly different from [The Ed Gein Story],” Charlie told Entertainment Weekly. “It was a little more irreverent, a little more sort of bonkers, theatrical, [a] little bit more comedy, tonally than the past season that I had done. So it just felt like a fun opportunity.”
Rebecca saw her role as the villainous stepmother as a chance to unleash her comedic side.
“I’ve never played a true out-and-out villain,” she told Variety. “I just loved on the page how funny she was. It just felt like such an opportunity to be both funny and scary at the same time, which is an interesting tonal challenge.”
Director Max Winkler also confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the show is intentionally comedic, which presented its own challenges.
“It was really challenging to make because a lot of it is comedic, with the insane way that people wrote and spoke and had expectations for women in that time period,” the Love Story director explained. “Which is not that long ago…”
He added: “1890 is so laughably insane, and the fact that there’s still some crossover to it today and that half of the internet thinks that we should go back to that way of life? It lends itself to make fun of it.”
Monster is full of blood splatter, and the makeup team went to great lengths to cover Ella Beatty and Vicky Krieps in it
“Sometimes the blood on my face was hand-painted with makeup brushes,” Ella told Tudum. “Sometimes it was literally poured onto me. Sometimes it came from what’s called a blood rig. So every time I would slam an axe onto the blood rig, fake blood would shoot out onto my face and body.”
Describing the process as both “realistic” and “messy”, she also shared a little behind-the-scenes hack for how they removed the blood with “a healthy dose of shaving cream”.
It wasn’t just fake blood that the cast of Monster season 4 had to contend with on set, though
When blood isn’t being splattered in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the cast had puke and diarrhoea to contend with.
Most notably, the episode Strong Kitty is definitely not one for the squeamish – with Abby and Andrew Borden unknowingly sitting down for a meal of spoiled oysters, resulting in them projectile vomiting and running to the bathroom before long.
The crew spent much time and energy creating the gross scene, with director Max recalling to The Wrap: “That was a very messy, difficult day, but I am very pleased with how it turned out.
“Jack Price – our editor on that episode, was incredible in finding the musicality of it all.”
To make that gross scene as realistic as possible, they hooked Rebecca and Charlie up with subtly-disguised tubes, which the prop team filled with a disgusting orange liquid to recreate projectile vomiting.
Unfortunately, the cast found shooting this scene to be a particularly unpleasant experience
“Rebecca has a very hard time being around vomiting and said very early that she is inclined to vomit if she’s around it,” the director explained to The Wrap. “So that was my biggest fear, protecting Rebecca.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he added: “Rebecca did one of the bravest things, because it’s a real thing, her thing.
“She was like shaking, so her courage to do that and to trust me… we tried to do it as quickly as possible, and it pays off because she’s so amazing in it. Intricate dinner scenes are always challenging.”
It wasn’t any easier for Charlie, who “ate the oysters that were canned because we needed them to be super big”.
“Charlie was a hero that day, but so was Rebecca,” Max said of his cast during his interview with The Wrap.
Charlie told Entertainment Weekly that he’s “kind of a germaphobe”, making the scene particularly unpleasant to film for him.
“Even if it’s fake vomit, being covered head to toe in vomit and diarrhoea for the day did not seem like a particularly enjoyable experience,” he shared. “And, indeed, it wasn’t.”
Luckily, Rebecca didn’t find it as bad as she was worried it would be.
“It was so funny and preposterous, and nothing was remotely like real vomiting, actually,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “It turned out that my biggest challenge was maintaining a straight face when the camera was on me, because I don’t think I’ve ever laughed more.”
Monster’s creators had long planned how the final episode of The Lizzie Borden Story was going to end
Season four’s final moments focus on Aileen Wuornos’ execution. As she sits in the electric chair, she sees Lizzie and Maggie beckoning her towards the light.
“I always knew the last shot was going to be Aileen’s body and the curtain closing to match the ornate beautiful curtain of the fairytale version of ‘Lizzie was this crazy person!’ and then the actual reality,” director Max told The Hollywood Reporter.
Meanwhile, Ian told Tudum: “In a way, Lizzie has a happy ending, and Aileen didn’t. She didn’t get away with anything. So it felt right to land on her and give her, if not a happy ending, one that is satisfying.”
There was a special meaning behind the closing song in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, too
As the show concludes, I Know by Fiona Apple plays. The director explained to The Hollywood Reporter why he felt the Grammy winner’s music was perfect for that final scene.
Describing the artist as “someone else who’s been objectified for being incredible and brilliant and talented”, and had a “back turned on her for being difficult or traumatised or whatever”, Max added: “That song, that moment of an artist I admire so much helped me kind of close the loop.”
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is available to stream on Netflix now.
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