Politics

Has Farage’s brain been hacked? Has he started talking in his sleep? There’s no shortage of explanations for this scandal

We’ve all been there. It’s a lovely summer’s day and you just want a bit of me time. A quiet lunch of champagne and oysters. As you do. Anything to get away from having to pretend you are interested in the people of Clacton. Hell, it’s bad enough being expected to actually visit Clacton – who in their right mind would want to do that? – let alone having to talk to the little people who live there.

So, you’re just minding your own business when who should turn up but two of your closest mates in politics – or contractors who you’ve barely heard of, as you prefer to call them – saying they have been having meetings with an American donor and his son who have already given you more than £30,000 for an opinion poll you have commissioned and now want to bung you another £500,000. And these guys would like to meet you.

Continue reading…

Party insider reveals how election campaign was blindsided by rise of anti-immigrant feeling in new book

For Siobhán Fenton, the dream of Sinn Féin winning power and leading a progressive leftwing government evaporated the day she was canvassing in Dublin and felt a cold, sharp sting on her neck.

She was in the passageway of a block of flats in the inner city, knocking on doors, and looked around for the source. Fenton, a media adviser to the party leader, Mary Lou McDonald, felt another sting on her shoulder, then another on her forearm.

Continue reading…

The pattern in the US and Britain is clear. They serve up stunt after stunt to mask incompetence and the betrayal of all those who trusted them

It’s a shame Nigel Farage ducked the announcement of his victory in the Clacton byelection, which confirmed his return as MP for the seat he had needlessly resigned from just a few weeks earlier. You’d have thought he would have loved it. It was the culmination of a stunt, an exercise in politics as performance. It was a display animated by – and seeking to inflame – grievance, a million miles away from the hard, grinding work of tackling the problems that underlie those grievances. It was an attempt to deflect scrutiny, distract attention and evade responsibility. It was, in other words, everything nationalist populists like him excel at. Indeed, the only thing.

Reform UK said Farage stayed away because Essex police had warned of a “credible threat” to his security, a claim swiftly denied by Essex police. (Add a flexible approach to the truth to that list of nationalist populists’ talents.) Still, it was a slightly odd claim to make. Recall Farage’s favoured explanation – there are others – for the undeclared £5m gift he received from the Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, which prompted the very parliamentary investigation that so riled the Reform leader he felt compelled to quit his seat and seek a preemptive not guilty verdict from the people of Clacton: namely, that he needed the money to pay for private, enhanced security. It seems £5m was not quite enough to ensure the lucky recipient would be safe standing next to a man dressed as a bin.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Continue reading…

A horrific knife attack on a street in June sparked another summer’s night of racial violence, stoked by loyalist groups. How did the unrest erupt – and why do many fear it will happen again?

Shortly after 10.30pm on Monday 8 June, as a summer twilight lingered over Belfast, a horrific scene unfolded on Kinnaird Avenue: a man straddled and repeatedly stabbed a figure lying on the ground in a bloody assault that ended only after onlookers intervened.

Others captured the drama on cameraphones and uploaded the footage to social media. Once seen, the grainy images were hard to forget, and by dawn on Tuesday 9 June they were ricocheting around X, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram and other platforms.

Continue reading…

In an increasingly dangerous world, our European neighbours are finding safety in numbers – but Britain is on the outside. The new PM’s task is to change that

There is an orange cloud in the sky. I’m not referring to the wildfires ravaging parts of Europe and East Anglia, though they are connected. I mean the looming pall from across the Atlantic that threatens to spoil the sunny start to the premiership of Andy Burnham – and whose name is Donald Trump.

Burnham’s first 10 days or so in office have gone about as well as he or any of his team could have dared hope. His net approval rating has risen by 17 points, according to one early poll, gaining ground with every category of voter except supporters of Reform UK, though they too like some of what they see. His easy manner, no-notes speech-making and agility on social media have won plaudits, including from a usually sceptical press.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading…

The Paramount-Warner Bros merger is being fought in the US and UK. Britain’s culture secretary knows the risks and can intervene. She should

Though it has yet to become front-page news in the UK, you should know about the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros merger. It threatens to inflict immense harm on the British public. As actors and public figures who have spent our careers in the arts in Britain – working with British crews, on British stages and sets – we have a responsibility to the public who support, enjoy and consume the art we make.

The UK is being threatened by a media merger that would harm our workers, our culture and the public – but we can stop it. We are encouraged by Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, who recently sent letters to Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery, as well as a statement to parliament, indicating that she is “minded to intervene” in Paramount’s $110bn takeover of Warner Bros.

Alan Cumming, Benedict Cumberbatch and Benedict Wong are actors working in the UK and Hollywood

Continue reading…

Anton Jäger has been lauded for his exceptional ability to make sense of these strange political times – and he’s only 32. The writer and academic explains why we’re living in an age of hyperpolitics

‘I am acutely conscious,” said Andy Burnham outside 10 Downing Street on Monday, “that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street.” It was good to hear him say it because, beneath all the cabinet gossip and rune-reading, there is a feeling of terror about the immediate future and also about ourselves, the electorate. Is this who we are now? Wildly enthusiastic one minute, seething the next; as passionate about the change we want as we are convinced that those who promise it are incapable of enacting it?

It is perhaps not surprising that Anton Jäger’s recent book, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences, is being read by Labour watchers and leftwing thinkers. As the New York Times wrote, it’s “among the best and most dazzling efforts to model the political present in all its maddening strangeness”. Still, I think Jäger was surprised to have his honeymoon interrupted so I could interview him about it. Life comes at everyone quite fast in a hyperpolitical age.

Continue reading…

Is the machinery of state jammed, or is the reason for the slow pace of change more personal than institutional?

Eighteen months into the 24 it turned out he would last in No 10, Keir Starmer was a man in a hurry. The biggest frustration with the job, he told MPs, concerned “speed and the ability to get things done”. The underlying problem, he thought, was that every time something had gone wrong in the past, “successive governments have put in place another procedure or another body or another consultation to try to stop ourselves ever making a mistake again”.

In airing his impatience, if little else, Starmer is in tune with the country he has become too unpopular to lead. Julian Gallie, a pollster at Merlin Strategy, says voters have been “crying out for change for a decade”, even if they have sent inconsistent signs about what sort of change it should be. The Brexit vote, the Corbyn surge of 2017, the Johnson majority of 2019 and the Tory rout of 2024 can all be seen as “a desperate roll of the dice against a status quo” that somehow feels impossible to shift.

Continue reading…

Nigel Farage foresaw a summer stroll to glory when he forced a byelection – but now risks his career being trashed

The votes were being counted and the media had gathered for the moment that Andy Burnham, his sights on Downing Street, would be elected as the MP for Makerfield in greater Manchester. But Nick the Flying Brick, a candidate on numerous occasions for the Monster Raving Loony party, could not help but be distracted. How could it be that the candidate across the Edge Conference Centre with a silver bin on his head had managed to secure the 10 local nominations necessary to stand?

The Flying Brick, real name Nick Delves, 60, who is also treasurer for the Loony party, had knocked doors-a-plenty to get the nominations for his veteran candidate, Howling Laud Hope. Yet, the Flying Brick hadn’t seen any chaps on the streets with bins on their heads. Certainly not in recent days. Not a single one.

Continue reading…