In 2016, soon after his enforced departure from politics, Ed Balls recalled: “In the period from 1996 to 2004, I don’t remember anything the Tories did having any effect on my life whatsoever.” There are some inside government today – basking in a New Labour-sized majority – who view Kemi Badenoch with similarly magisterial indifference. “Nothing” was how one aide replied when I asked what they made of the Conservative leader’s speech on net zero this week. But Labour recognises that it needs to absorb the implications of a changing political climate. From one perspective, Badenoch’s intervention – she declared that net zero by 2050 was impossible “without a serious drop in our living standards” or bankruptcy – looks like an opportunity for ...

Let’s get the Kemi Badenoch bit out of the way first this week. The leader of the opposition came to PMQs fresh from launching the start of the Conservatives’ policy development programme by ending cross-party consensus on net zero and inadvertently admitting that Nigel Farage is probably far better known in households around the country than she is. Despite the shock over the Trump-Putin phone call last night that has sent Western allies scrambling, Badenoch decided not to replay the statesmanlike role she performed two weeks ago, when the House was united (one or two aside) in its support of Ukraine. Nor did she have anything to say about the domestic issue of the week: welfare reform. Instead, Badenoch chose to ...

In 2015, when Labour’s acting leader Harriet Harman announced that the party would not vote against the Conservatives’ Welfare Bill, there was one leadership candidate who defended her: Liz Kendall. “People said to us: ‘We don’t trust you on the money, we don’t trust you on welfare reform,’” Kendall remarked then. “If we are going to oppose things we have to put something else in its place because if we carry on making the same arguments we have done over the last five years we will get the same result.” Kendall did not win the battle – finishing last in the leadership contest – but she did, like a Labourite Barry Goldwater, win the war. A decade on, Kendall yesterday announced ...

Myth 1: Lots of people are going to lose most or all their benefits Before Labour’s changes to the benefits system were announced, Jeremy Corbyn and Independent Alliance MPs claimed that “devastating cuts” were planned by a government set upon “slashing disability benefits”. BBC News interviewed people who didn’t know what the measures would be, and asked them what their lives would be like “without benefits” – implying that the people interviewed, who clearly had serious health conditions, might lose all of their support. A Green Party spokesperson warned that Labour was “taking benefits away to pay for defence”. It is standard practice to allow a whiff of government policy out into the national conversation before it’s actually announced, and backbench MPs ...

It’s fair to say that the Conservative Party is not currently at the centre of attention. Oppositions rarely are, especially when they have been all but obliterated at the most recent general election. The antics of President Donald Trump mean that domestic politics is often overshadowed, though the hard fiscal choices faced by Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves mean that this will soon change. Yet even as an opposition party, the Tories receive less attention than Reform. The Liberal Democrats – with the ability to position themselves as the anti-Trump, pro-EU party – also occupy a more distinctive space. But for the Conservatives, greater attention would not necessarily be positive. The truth is that morale is very low. Whatever the fiscal difficulties ...

Keir Starmer started in 2020 by offering “Corbynism in a suit”. Then, after election victory last year, he led a soft leftish but often directionless government. Now he heads an administration that is “more Tory than the Tories” and taking a “chainsaw” to the state. Such is the popular media narrative about the Prime Minister. Downing Street, perhaps unsurprisingly, suggests the reality is more complex. “Ridiculous and wrong, we have never called it that,” is how one No 10 aide responds to “project chainsaw”, the nickname given to plans drawn up by the Labour Together think tank. Rather than dismantling the state – in the manner of Elon Musk or the Argentine president Javier Milei – Starmer aims to give it a ...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Premier League football clubs fleece their paying customers. We, the fans, are prisoners of the rapacious owners who have the laws of supply and demand horribly skewed in their favour. Our only countervailing, and somewhat feeble, power is to envelop them with suspicion and rudeness. This week Manchester United – for decades the number one club in England – revealed its plans for a new £2 billion pound stadium. This was not greeted with thunderous approval. Within minutes there was an outpouring of dissent. The Norman Foster-designed stadium would be a “circus”, and the sheer scale of the enterprise made no sense – not least because the club had just claimed financial pressure as ...

Those who blame Britain’s governing lethargy on an anonymous, anti-dynamic “blob” can hardly claim to be disappointed. In a wide-ranging speech on reforming the “overstretched” and “weak” state, the Prime Minister’s most headline grabbing announcement was the scrapping of NHS England – the world’s largest quango. The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, will now take charge, as it becomes subsumed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) over the next two years. NHS England (NHSE) was established in 2013 as part of Andrew Lansley’s health service reforms. The aim was to take the NHS “out of politics”, the NHSE always being separate to the NHS itself. The body was tasked with overseeing the day-to-day running of the health service: its budget ...