Burnham speaks with all the confidence of a mayor but without the gravitas of a Prime Minister October 13, 2026 Andy Burnham earned his spurs as a great communicator on the back of a few summer TikToks, but is the shine coming off just a couple of months into the new job? While some people still appreciate the supposedly down to earth ‘tell it like it is’ approach, there can be no denying that the [...]
Badenoch puts Tories on difficult path to the right destination October 8, 2026 Party conference season has come to an end, having barely registered for most voters beyond an extra dose of politics on the news and in their feeds. Party leaders always have to balance two audiences: their supporters in the hall and the sceptics at home. As a new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham’s conference speech was [...]
Will anyone turn Badenoch’s looming battle into a tapestry? October 7, 2026 The Tory party has been enjoying itself in Birmingham, not least thanks to the delightful wheeze of mocking up the Bayeux Tapestry to tell the story of British politics under Labour’s first two years in power. The exhibition may well prove to be among the most popular offerings at the party conference; behind Jeremy Clarkson [...]
With Brexit on the ballot the next election will be box office October 1, 2026 Whatever else Andy Burnham’s conference speech achieves, it has certainly opened up some major dividing lines in British politics – and some old wounds. The next election, when it comes, could well have Brexit on the ballot after the PM said he’s open to looking at everything from joining the customs union or entering the [...]
Burnham sets out his socialist stall and business barely gets a mention September 30, 2026 We were told to expect a speech that would leave no room for doubt about what Andy Burnham believes in, and we got one. There might not be much detail yet about how the Burnham Revolution will unfold but there is no ambiguity, either. The Prime Minister painted a vision of what this country could [...]
Andy Burnham can’t treat Heathrow expansion as a local planning issue September 29, 2026 Has Andy Burnham’s commitment to devolution morphed into a convenient excuse not to lead? I ask, because he seems to have excused himself from the debate about a critical £50bn national infrastructure project: Heathrow’s third runway. The project has been debated since the 1980s but officially kicked off in 2003 when Labour’s Alistair Darling, then [...]
Treasury’s new Head of Growth will have their work cut out September 24, 2026 Do you want the good news or the bad news? Trick question, I’m afraid. There is no good news. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has revised its forecast for UK economic growth this year from 0.9 per cent to 1.1 per cent, but – before you reach for the champagne – they’ve [...]
Frozen tax thresholds to hold back Brits for ten miserable years September 23, 2026 In March 2021 Chancellor Rishi Sunak described it as “a tax policy that is progressive and fair.” In November 2022, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt extended the policy, describing it as necessary and fair. In October 2024, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced an end to the policy, saying extending it beyond 2028 “would hurt working people.” Alas, a [...]
Will our fiscal psychodrama never end? September 22, 2026 I’m sure it wasn’t always like this. There was a time, really not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, when trying to predict the contents of an upcoming Budget was limited to dedicated policy wonks and Westminster’s most dogged journalists. These days, fiscal speculation is a major occupation for several months of [...]
Why are the AI chiefs calling for a slowdown? September 17, 2026 Why are the bosses of the world’s top AI companies calling for regulation and advocating a slowdown in the technology’s development? Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have been joined by Deepmind co-founder Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk in calling for a slower pace of progress while safety and regulation catch up. Questions about [...]
