Stride vows to protect OBR in new dividing line with Farage January 12, 2026 Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride has vowed to protect the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in any future Conservative government, drawing a dividing line with Reform’s Nigel Farage on approaches to controlling public finances. Stride is expected to re-establish the Conservative Party’s firm commitment to maintaining the fiscal watchdog as an independent body scoring the effects [...]
Nadhim Zahawi defects to Reform as polling lead extended January 12, 2026 Former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has defected to Reform UK as fresh polling has shown the party extending its lead over Labour and the Tories. Zahawi, a former ally of Boris Johnson who served as Chancellor for a matter of months, announced his high-profile defection in a press conference in Westminster on Monday. Along with new [...]
Reform announces Laila Cunningham will run for London Mayor January 7, 2026 Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has announced that Westminster City councillor Laila Cunningham will stand as its candidate to be the Mayor of London in 2028. In a press conference on Wednesday morning, Farage said Cunningham would also lead Reform’s local campaigns in London ahead of crucial council elections in May. During her speech, she criticised [...]
Tears, scandal, c*ck-ups and conspiracy: Westminster’s worst moments of 2025 December 23, 2025 Westminster never disappoints. When Keir Starmer came into Downing Street, he promised that politics would “tread more lightly” on the lives of everyday people. He was likely referring to the farce of Partygate, leadership battles and political blunders under successive Tory governments. But Labour have got caught up in less than pleasant situations of their [...]
Know your OBR from your CPS? Take City AM’s politics quiz of 2025 December 20, 2025 Welcome to City AM‘s politics quiz of 2025, a year where Keir Starmer said his best moment in office was walking into Downing Street, Kemi Badenoch got Northern Ireland’s voting record on Brexit wrong and Nigel Farage admitted he did not own property in his constituency. There have been many other errors, blunders and mishaps [...]
The secret to Reform’s rise? They don’t put their out of offices on December 16, 2025 Reform used the summer holiday vacuum to further their cause, and it's made all the difference, writes Michael Martins in today's Notebook.
The City is thirsty for more detail from Reform December 16, 2025 Appearing before MPs yesterday, Keir Starmer bemoaned the “consultations, regulations [and] arms-length bodies” that create “a thicket of reasons why you can’t do something.” He was responding to a question from Dame Meg Hillier, the Labour MP who chairs the committee in front of which he was appearing, about whether he had prepared enough for [...]
‘Picking winners? This is about backing champions’ – Reform’s Zia Yusuf on a radical approach to business December 16, 2025 Reform has by any measure enjoyed an incredible 2025. But for much of the poll-topping year, its economic vision has remained an unknown entity. Ali Lyon met policy chief Zia Yusuf to hear, for the first time, his party’s plans for Britain’s flatlining economy and the millions of businesses in it. Zia Yusuf is feeling [...]
Reform UK to offer bumper bonus to high-performing civil servants December 15, 2025 Nigel Farage’s Reform UK would offer bumper bonus payments to the best-performing civil servants delivering on government policy and objectives. In a shake-up of how Whitehall works, Reform UK’s Danny Kruger revealed the party would increase the bonus pool for performance-related pay by five times. The new budget would be aimed at retaining the “finest [...]
Reform UK and the Conservatives: a coalition of the unwilling? December 8, 2025 How credible are rumours of a deal between Reform UK and the Conservatives to “unite the right”? Asks Eliot Wilson Last week, The Financial Times reported that Nigel Farage had told donors some kind of understanding between Reform UK and the Conservative Party before the next general election was “inevitable”. Whether a “merger”, a “pact” [...]