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Malcolm Gooderham is the founder of Elgin Advisory, and a former Conservative Party adviser.

The media profile and some polling suggest the Green Party is on the rise.

We have been here before, but this crop of Green Leaders has a more pernicious and divisive politics. Their focus is not on mainstreaming support for environmental causes, but on delegitimising the state of Israel. In doing so, they reveal their bigotry and raise broader questions about the Left’s political activism, the treatment of the Jewish community and the role of the State broadcaster.

The Green Party, like the far Left in general, has a long-standing and unhealthy obsession with Jews and the state of Israel.  While the Left indulges all sorts of gesture politics and flirts with all sorts of boycotts, they reserve their passion and ‘progressive outrage’ for Israelis. This is currently driving Green Party campaigns to pressure shopkeepers and residents not to stock or buy goods imported from Israel. The tactics and discrimination has yet to attract the opprobrium they warrant. Note we have not seen Sir Keir Starmer rush out a demand for an apology or retraction unlike his decision to single-out  Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

The Green political energy tilts towards foreign affairs and is Israel-centric or more accurately phobic. There is little ‘green space’ for campaigns to boycott goods from nations other than Israel. For instance, the CCP and China ignore prior commitments to freedom of speech in Hong Kong. Not to mention the rights of religious minorities.  Or protests about Iran where the regime constantly kills demonstrators, denies women and girls equality and violates human rights. Or African countries where Muslim militias violently persecute Christians. Or, on our own Continent where they could raise awareness about Russia’s abduction of thousands of children from Ukraine. Or much closer to home, they could focus their energies on delivering accountability for the grooming and gang-raping of teenagers across northern towns and cities. Their relative silence is woeful.

Sadly the new Green Leader Zack Polanski has been swept up in the Green tide of opposition to Israel. As a man who is not shy about his Jewish ancestry he has been on a journey, from challenging the Green Party’s unhealthy pre-occupation with Israel – which he once bemoaned as “obsessive” – to now championing their anti-Zionist causes. His politics are morphing with those of Jeremy Crobyn and a political alliance with the former Labour Leader seems inevitable.

The Green wave of anti-Israeli activity is a salutary reminder of an uncomfortable political truth, those on the far Left do not see Jews as a minority worthy of their support. Instead they prefer to isolate and even intimidate them. While claiming to be inclusive they repeatedly single out one country and people for their caustic campaigns.

For the far Left opposition to Israel is a touchstone issue. Politicians that do not sign-up to an anti-Zionist agenda fall foul of a perverse purity test and are not welcome in certain movements. It is seemingly a driving force and even organising principle of politics for Leftists, like the Corbyn/ Zultana zealots or the Green brigade.

Leaving aside the BBC’s coverage of Hamas’ behaviour before, during and after the ceasefire, it is deeply disturbing that Britain’s state broadcaster is unmoved by anti-Zionism. At the chaotic launch of the breakaway Labour movement, ‘Your Party’, Zultana’s speech received its biggest cheers to her cries of anti-Zionism. The BBC team clipped and replayed this, of course, but not as an example of extremism and or even a radical agenda.

It is alarming that politicians on the far Left feel they enjoy social permission to openly say they are  “anti-Zionist”. In doing so they display bigotry, but it often goes unchecked and unremarked upon. Their fellow travellers, not least in the media, either share their agenda or fail to see it as a corrosive ideology.

In fact, anti-Zionist propagandists are probably the modern day ‘UI’, or ‘Useful Idiots’. The term the Kremlin reserved for western ciphers for their propaganda during the Cold War. The new cadre are also making fools of themselves by giving air cover to another enemy of freedom and liberty, Islamic fundamentalists, who not only want to oppress and deny Jews a homeland but want to eradicate them and Judeo-Christian people and values.

While the Left and Polanski himself may be reticent to talk about it, Jews living in Britain, like Jews the world over, are deeply worried about the march of militant Islam and its ideology of hate. This is too often buried by default or by design by politicians in Europe. It is a grim irony that Militant Islam poses a real and present danger to the very democratic values that Left-wing political classes espouse.

Yet their own extremism blinds them to the potential outcomes of their witless attacks on the state of Israel and the Jewish people.

I have a growing fascination with the homeless.

I don’t mean rough sleepers or those in temporary accommodation, though I believe we have a moral duty to help those people, whatever party you are in, especially veterans.

No, I mean the politically homeless.

My writing about the Conservative cause, might lead you to assume that those hovering in the no man’s land between Reform and Conservative – or have jumped into Reform’s forward trenches as new friends – are no concern of mine.

Not so.

I meet far too many voters, many who are friends, and most – much like Nigel Farage and his entire team who used to be Tories but aren’t now – who, nearly two years on, are still very reluctant to give the Tories a second glance, let alone chance. I don’t like it, but I get it, because it’s our problem, not theirs.

They feel let down. They feel they’ve ‘nothing to lose giving Reform a try’ – much as some did to Labour in 2024 – but many are watching and looking, even if with cynicism to see if the Tories can produce something they might feel able to get behind. Most have not quite given up on us.

The Tories musn’t give up on them.

“I’m a former Tory but I really think they are finished for me. I just don’t think they have changed. They haven’t said anything, Kemi is silent, the party is nowhere” is something I hear over and over again.

Now just for the record, because I’m paid to – and and happy to – watch, read, listen to everything the Conservatives say and do I know, for a fact this is not true.

Even Robert Jenrick did think the Tories could change, because he was determined to lead it. They have changed with him, and will now without him. There are plenty who’ll say not enough, I might even agree, but it’s not credible to say not at all.

But whatever my level of belief that doesn’t make these people’s convictions and feelings their problem. It’s the Tories’ problem.

Lord Ashcroft’s latest focus group was instructive:

“Kemi comes across really well. She’s more straight-talking. I trust her to do what she says more than I would Keir Starmer. Not that I’m going to vote for her necessarily, but I think she far exceeds Starmer;”

Like her, probably not going to vote for her. Conservative problem.

Here’s another:

“I think she speaks well but I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her. With the amount of people who are leaving the party, there’s obviously something that isn’t ringing home to them;”  or “She was in the Tory government, so if she came out and said, I’m sorry we got stuff wrong, I tried to change it… But unfortunately, I haven’t heard her apologise for the crap the country is in;” “ The Tories are still all over the shop. Kemi Badenoch aside, they are a mess, an absolute bloody mess.”

Now I know, the Conservative are hearing all that, even if some voters aren’t hearing them.

Senior Tories will list – and it’s a big list – all the the new policies they’ve announced, costed and can deliver – and if they hadn’t done so much Reform wouldn’t had speeches last week – they list all the changes internally, the money coming in, the new candidate structures. Almost in a frustrated tone, saying:

“If this doesn’t look very different to the offer in 2024, then someone is just deliberately being obtuse.”

That was actually said to me a week ago. I pointed out there needed to be much more coming, more radical, still Conservative and if that’s unpopular truths, so be it. I also noted some of our natural voters are still in “la,la,la not listening” mode.

It was Iain Duncan Smith on election night 2024, when the scale of the debacle was clear who gave the party its best bit of starting advice; “They have to earn the right to be heard again“. When Badenoch became leader with that firmly in her mind, she warned it would take ‘at least two years.’

My former colleague Henry Hill had a rule of thumb for gauging whether the Tories were being heard by how much was in the papers about them. Not enough is the answer – and if it’s getting slightly better it’s still a Conservative problem.

So what do you if people simply won’t listen?

You take a lesson from my driving instructor: ‘Take space to make space.’

This week Kemi did.

She was on TV talking about a new policy offer to younger voters – on top of the abolition of stamp duty – around Student loans and Plan 2 interest payments. So far so old school normal.

She was sat on the Good Morning Britain sofa with Susanna Reid, and the former Labour MP, and Gordon Brown SpAd Ed Balls.

Quick detour. I still don’t get how ITV think it’s appropriate for the spouse of a Labour Cabinet Minister, with his background to be asking questions of the leaders of rival parties, or those whose jobs his wife was hoping to take. Or indeed the final apex of inappropriateness his actual wife. I’ve complained before. I still think it’s really bad optics.

Kemi then gets ambushed.

Money Saving – and lots of money-making – expert Martin Lewis pops up unannounced and starts telling her she’s wrong and pretty much talking over her. Now he apologised later, and Balls did on air, but here’s the key; she took space to make space, and apart from the egregiously biased Bev Turner, most people think she did a great job.

She wasn’t being heard, so she pointed out two men were shouting her down. She didn’t get angry, but made her case – a case she was fully across because the policy was thought through, and she had the details. She stayed calm, and delivered. That’s how you make yourself heard.

She then wrote a classy online response to Lewis:

“…honestly, don’t worry. I do love a feisty debate! It helps people understand what the real issues are. You and I agree on the principle: student loans have become a scam.

Whatever the Coalition government brought in back in 2012, it’s clearly not working for the world of 2026. So I’d genuinely love to come on your show and debate my plan vs yours. I’m putting student loans on the political agenda because we’ve got to do more for young people. It’s just one part of our New Deal For Young People. As the opposition, Conservatives may not be able to change the law right now, certainly not without cross-party support, but we can set the agenda especially while the government seems distracted by all sorts of other things.”

Martin Lewis would be mad not to invite her on. Labour crowed how she was attacking a Conservative policy for no longer working. She could remind his listeners that that’s the logic for every Labour U-turn – and those who say the Conservatives haven’t changed now have a clear example of change.

Will this win an election? No, not even close. Nobody’s saying that. But she’s repeatedly showing how it’s done.

I’ve banged on about the fact she can’t do this alone. Carving out the space to be heard must be done by every MP, Councillor, and volunteer – in the House, on the streets and on the doorstep. It is the only option, and it can be done. It’s not about ‘turning up the volume’ but amplifying the quality of the message, the sense and values in the policy – and selling hope.

I’ve talked recently about a slight wobble in confidence that momentum had dipped. I had evidence, but I also got messages from Tories insisting how much they’re up for the fight. They’re finding that fire from Kemi’s lead but also being fed up with the broken record of those vowing to ‘destroy’ them or insist they’re ‘finished’ – the same folk who’d foolishly assumed the Tories were already dead.

Still alive, still kicking.

Do I want to see more, and better? Yes. But the art of being heard by people who don’t want to listen takes determined calm not frustration. It requires a tactical swallow of humility and then to “KBO” consistently stating your case.

Again, and again, and again. Until you win.

Scarlett Maguire is a pollster, and founder of Merlin Strategy.

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election promising improvements to ordinary American’s cost of living and tough action on the border.

Even with public opinion split aggressively on partisan lines, there was still relative optimism about what he could achieve on those two key issues for the American public, and he began his second term in the White House with positive approval ratings on both issues.

However, American voters’ attitudes towards the controversial president have cooled significantly since then, and he has found himself going from positive territory to 12 points underwater on the issue of immigration, with some pollsters recording a net 29 negative swing. 

American voters now see Trump’s handling of immigration more negatively than positively, despite the fact that in many senses he has delivered on his election promises of ‘mass deportations’ and tighter control on the Southern Border. Border crossings are at historic lows, with the U.S. Border Patrol recorded roughly 86,000 attempted illegal crossings at the Southern border from February 2025-2026, compared to 956,000 the previous year.

ICE under Trump has deported far fewer than the 3 million people deported under Barack Obama, and there is no doubt that ordinary Americans wanted to see firm and decisive action when it came to tackling immigration and the Southern border, with 66 per cent supporting deportations of illegal immigrants at the beginning of 2025. However, a majority (53 per cent) now think that the Trump administration is doing ‘too much’ on deportations, compared to 10 per cent who say too little and 36 per cent who say the right amount. Democrats overwhelmingly feel that there has been too much (86 per cent) but in a more worrying sign for the administration 20 per cent of Republicans feel the same way, with Hispanic Republicans (a crucial part of Trump’s 2024 coalition) much more likely to agree (47 per cent).

Whilst this unease in public opinion may not be unsurprising after the fatal shooting of two US citizens during conflicts between protesters and law enforcement officers,  it does seem to be having significant political impact. Trump himself has even begun an uncharacteristic climb-down, agreeing to wind down the ICE operations in Minnesota and pledged an end to unwanted ICE surges.

Despite all this, it would be a mistake for Democrats to interpret these changes in public opinion as signs of an appetite for a dramatically more progressive immigration system. Republicans are still more trusted on the issue overall, and just 17 per cent of voters oppose deportations full stop. Many Americans have responded badly to an appearance and tone from the administration more than they have substantially changed their views on illegal migration.

What does this mean for politicians in the UK wishing to draw lessons from the US?

In this country, immigration regularly tops voters’ most important issues, jostling with the cost of living for top spot in the public’s priorities, especially amongst Conservative and Reform voters. Views of the British public towards immigration are actually harsher than those across the Atlantic. They are more likely to support deportations and less likely to think that diversity strengthens the society. Brits support deporting those who are here illegally by more than a 3-1 margin, and by a nearly 2-1 margin support a large decrease in the number of new migrants allowed to the country (this includes both legal and illegal), and more than twice as many think that immigration in the past 10 years has been bad for the country than good.

That being said, as we have seen in America, the British public are very sensitive to the tone and rhetoric of the debate. Whilst the median voter may now be in favour of deportations and hostile to the idea of increased migration, they are also wary of tone that appears too inflammatory and divisive.

At the end of last year, I conducted 20 hours of focus groups with members of the public about a wide range of issues, including immigration. Voters across the left and right are unhappy with the current migration system, however swing voters drawn from the centre and conservatives also respond badly to language on the subject that feels too ‘right-wing’ or ‘anti-immigration’ at the same time as supporting drastic changes to the migration system and huge reductions to numbers of both legal and illegal migrants. Many expressed concerns that the current levels of migration are felt to be unsustainable and feel that politicians have been unfairly prioritising concerns of migrants over British Citizens. However, many of these same voters also wanted to go out of their way to praise migrants who do contribute as ‘hard workers’ often in contrast to parts of the British population they feel are ‘too lazy’ to get a job. Many voters still up for grabs at the next election are looking for politicians to sound fair as well as tough.

Trump has had a talent for causing the world’s attention economy to revolve around his axis, and his second term in power has been no different. Voters, especially those on social media, frequently say they remember seeing more stories from the US than stories from home. As a consequence, Trump has an outsized importance on British voters’ psyche, and as the past 14 months have progressed much of the public appear increasingly wary of anything that seems to too closely mimic Trump’s America (although he still garners praise from many of his critics for ‘getting things done’.) Many considering Reform, especially women, are in fact alienated by a perception that they may be too close to MAGA, “I think he cosies up to Trump” “I think he and his party are starting to speak a lot of sense and attack areas that are of concern to the country. But then there is a little bit of nervousness at the same time, because he is a little bit intense… just a bit Trump-esque”.

As such, promises of an ‘ICE-style’ deportation agency in the UK risks landing badly with voters, who may respond well to the substance at the same time as poorly to the style.

However, it would be wrong for more liberally minded politicians to interpret voters’ concerns about optics and rhetoric as an indication of more progressive views.

There is, if anything, a stronger desire amongst the British electorate for significant changes to the migration system than there is in the US (which is a large part of the reason for Reform’s overwhelming lead when it comes to which party would be best to handle it), at the same time as significantly less appetite for an approach that appears too inflammatory for the sake of it.

Sir John Redwood is a former MP for Wokingham and a former Secretary of State for Wales, he now sits in the House of Lords.

The Attorney General intervenes widely across government and has considerable influence through being a trusted advisor of the Prime Minister.

Sir Keir Starmer himself as a former government lawyer approaches many problems by asking what the law, Treaties and internal law requires him to do. The problem is the lawyers helping him often seem to give bad advice, and regularly give advice which is unpopular with the public. Voters are fed up with international lawyers telling us what we must do  often favouring the foreigner at the expense of the UK national interest.

We can see bad law leading the Prime Minister astray over the Chagos islands.

First the government asserted that the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice that we should give the islands to Mauritius would soon result in the UK losing a binding case in the Court. They would then  order us to give the islands away on worse terms . We were told to settle before such an embarrassment. So why hadn’t these lawyers read our Treaty joining the International Court system? This clearly states that the Court cannot make a binding judgement against us on Commonwealth or defence matters. Diego Garcia and Mauritius are in both reserved categories. Many months have passed since we were told the ICJ would tell us what to do, but so far they have not tried such a move.

Worried no doubt by being told this, Ministers shifted to the UN Law of the Sea. Here they had not read far enough into the Treaty when we joined. Clause 298 gives us a clear opt out for defence matters, which our base at Diego Garcia most clearly is. The UK has always reserved the right to exempt defence matters from the Treaty jurisdiction.

These lawyers are usually particularly hot at defending the rights of former colonists of the previous colonising powers like the UK. So why did they announce the giveaway of the Chagos islands without bothering to consult the Chagos islanders. They should have been particularly careful as it was a previous Labour government that evicted the Chagossians from their homeland against their will. When the government did get round to talking to the islanders, now UK citizens, they discovered they do not want their islands given away to Mauritius. The Chagossians want the islands to stay British. So why didn’t this matter?

Worse still, when a few of the islanders decided as UK citizens to return to this British territory the UK government ordered them off their islands. More bad law, as they rapidly lost in Court with a finding they could not order them out. Many of us were particularly angry about this development. Here was a government which said it could not stop illegal migrants with no connection arriving in the UK, yet thought it could stop UK citizens returning to UK land where they originally lived.

The lawyers in the government have done a particularly bad job with illegal arrivals into  the UK. They promised to smash the gangs and stop people arriving here by boat. It should have been a law enforcement issue. Many of those arriving had paid money for an illegal boat trip to criminals who were probably not paying tax and were breaking the safety rules of boat travel. They often arrived without documents to say who they are, how old they are and where they came from.

Instead of the government lawyers strengthening the law to prevent this law breaking they weakened it. They removed the recently legislated but not enforced  provision that no-one arriving legally could then claim asylum. This  could have made a big difference to the numbers coming.

No wonder people are frustrated.

The truth is we elect a Prime Minister and government to tackle the problems of our day. This may well require changing the law. With a large majority this government could have changed the law on migration to get numbers down. Instead it changed the law so numbers rose. We expect our elected government to stand up for UK interests abroad, not to give in to any foreign power or court who want us to pay up and to surrender our assets. When negotiating new Treaties we only want to sign ones where we get a benefit, and where there is a clear exit clause if circumstances change.

The government is negotiating to give more money to the EU and to put us under more of their power to make laws for us. They fail to make a convincing case of how this could possibly help us. They refuse to show Parliament the texts of a new Agreement which will undermine our Brexit freedoms. Why do these lawyers want the EU to make our laws for us, when we will have no effective voice and no vote over what they wish to impose? The UK economy is not short of laws and rules. Importing more from the EU and paying them more money  is more likely to slow our growth further. It will be yet another burden on taxpayers.

The government seems determined to widen the growing gap between itself and the public on Chagos, on immigration and soon also on the EU re set. A government of the lawyers by the lawyers for the lawyers seems too often to find against the UK, its taxpayers and voters. It wants to assert the rights of the EU, of China, of Mauritius to the detriment of our country. No wonder the government becomes ever more unpopular. No wonder as it racks up the bills to pay foreign governments the tax burden gets worse.