Month: July 2026

Burnham: the jury has to be out for now…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

This blog starts in a similar vein to the one about Starmer after his general election victory. I wish Burnham well for the sake of the country and as a bulwark against Reform UK’s populism.

A reasonable start as PM. Fingers crossed…

His start was generally fine with a good Cabinet reshuffle. It may have been pretty ruthless (no bad thing) in ousting Starmerites, but getting rid of the blowhard David Lammy, the underperforming chancellor, Rachel Reeves and pushing Ed Miliband out of harm’s way to the Foreign Office are sound moves. John Healey as Chancellor also seems inspired. At least he can keep an eye on defence expenditure from there…

But the inconsistencies appearing on the policy front are worrying. I get the message about cost of living and moving governance out of London but if Burnham sticks to Labour’s manifesto as he said he would do, there is no money for any of his initiatives and you can’t just keep taxing the rich who are already paying record amounts of tax. Burnham says there is room for manoeuvre but how honest will he be on this?

So far measures to ease people’s everyday costs are small but totemic. However, fiddling the figures to pay for the removal of VAT on fuel by saying it is offset by savings from scrapping ID cards when there was no budget allocated to them is disingenuous. It bodes ill for future policy transparency.

Burnham to be frank seems lightweight but it is early days. He almost certainly will be overwhelmed by events but he can never be replaced this side of an election so he should relax into the job. Being generous, his belief in devolution, proportional representation and closer ties with Europe are grounds for supporting him alone.

But if Burnham drifts dangerously to the left, his government continues the stance of misunderstanding business and what it takes to get growth into the economy, fails to tackle welfare dependency and social care, the gloves come off. He has the summer to plan his longer term strategy. Let’s hope he uses that time wisely.

Badenoch takes the Tories on a road to nowhere…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

To be frank, Kemi Badenoch has had a good few months. She has got much better at PMQs, and Keir Starmer has provided an open goalmouth the size of well, England’s goalmouth in last night’s World Cup game against Argentina. She has been on a roll.

Strategic mistakes will undermine potential glimmers of Tory electoral recovery

She is also getting lucky with Reform. A rattled Farage has made a huge error in resigning his parliamentary seat and standing for re-election against Count Binface. He could lose although the backlash from the awful murder of Reform supporter Ann Widdecombe will resonate. The issue of the safety of MPs such as Farage which he has constantly raised has come to the fore tragically and may help him get through although with diminished authority.

So, what is Badenoch doing with these rare glimpses of sunlight. Squandering them. In a clumsy attempt to unite the Right back under the Tory Party, she announced through a rambling, badly written article, a decision to get tough with wannabe parliamentary candidates who disagree with her. Basically, any Tory who supports staying in a reformed ECHR or keeping to 2035 net zero targets is not welcome. That’s me out then!

Why the attack on freedom of thought? Why ignore the potential seven million voters who feel electorally homeless as the Tories have drifted to the Right and the LibDems miss an historic opportunity to fill the gap?

It is stupid politics to try and win over Reform voters in this way which is Badenoch’s obvious aim. Many of them will drift back to Labour if Andy Burnham is any good and Tory defectors to Reform, particularly prominent ones, are paying a heavy price anyway. Just ask Robert Jenrick…

Badenoch is turning her back on mainstream Tory voters just when she needs them. She is curtailing freedom of thought and speech within her party, narrowing its base in the process. The result? So far, for all her run of good luck and a little skill, the Tories have barely moved in the polls.

Perhaps it is time to call in Vice-President JD Vance to free the centre-right from Badenoch’s hard right-wing political correctness. Now, that would be a sight and sound to witness…

Farage’s folly…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

This blog has argued for some time that Reform UK has peaked. It is loathed by too many people to win a General Election outright and that is before tactical voting, the advent of a new far-right party, Restore, and at least the short-term impact of a Burnham premiership. Meanwhile, the party sits at the top of opinion polls waiting for new ‘events… dear boy, events’ to possibly consume it.

Those events are happening now and not in a good way for this insurgent party. The strength of Reform has always been its controversial leader, Nigel Farage, surely one of the most consequential politicians of the last few decades. Its weakness has been, well, Nigel Farage The party is too much of a one man band. He has a thin skin, cannot get on with anyone for long, is not interested in policy detail and is loose with the truth even for a politician. Remind you of anyone? None of this seemed to matter. A Guardian lead writer when asked what was the main parties’ strategy towards Reform, in the face of Farage’s continuing popularity replied their only hope was that something happened to incapacitate him.

He is not a cat and maybe running out of lives…

Well, incapacitated he might become for reasons not forecast a few weeks ago. First came the hidden personal donation to Farage of £5 million from a Thai based crypto billionaire. He has given three contradictory reasons for being given the gift, none of them convincing and now faces a parliamentary standards inquiry. Next comes receiving undeclared benefits from a convicted fraudster, meriting a second enquiry. At worse, these scandals could force Farage out of parliament.

Clearly rattled and genuinely angry about being hounded by the press, he has decided to resign his seat and force a by-election in his parliamentary seat of Clacton on the subject of his innocence of breaking any rules. “I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,” said Farage in a televised address yesterday. “This will be a people versus the establishment by-election.”

Umm… this is not America. You actually can’t get away with too much in public life. The major parties are planning to boycott the election making an initial victory for Farage meaningless. They will await the results of a resumed parliamentary standards enquiry which may lead to a second by-election which will then be contested.

This may well be curtains for Farage. The public is tired of all the drama in UK politics and one senses they have little sympathy for him and may have had enough.

As for Farage, he looks as if he might have had enough too. Bored of being in parliament, watching his party consistently underperform in by-elections and now all this scrutiny. He may simply have run out of juice and give up.

Who could blame him? What a pity.