Police have ‘locked down’ an entire town to stop unrest by setting up a dispersal zone covering the whole of Gosport following protests sparked by the arrival of a migrant boat using a ‘new route’ from Normandy. The Mail has more.
The order means anyone gathering in the Hampshire town of Gosport who does not leave when instructed to do so by a police officer can be arrested.
Hampshire Constabulary has also banned protesters from wearing face coverings to conceal their identity.
Six people were arrested during clashes between police and around 300 protesters last night as two RNLI lifeboats brought 149 migrants ashore.
The order, which affects the area shown here in red, means that anyone gathering in Gosport who does not leave when instructed to do so by a police officer can be arrested
The dinghy was seen heading towards Britain from near Utah Beach in Normandy yesterday morning, making it the latest boat to take the far longer route across the Channel rather than the more usual crossing from the Calais area to Dover.
The dinghy was shadowed by French rescue vessels until it was met by the RNLI boats in British waters. The migrants were landed at Haslar Marina in Gosport and have now been taken by coach to Dover for processing.
The RNLI is stepping up security at its locations across the south coast after coming under renewed criticism from anti-immigration protesters.
The charity is taking action after members of the public gained access to a restricted building at its headquarters in Poole, Dorset, by ‘tailgating’ staff. It has now submitted an urgent planning application to install three access-controlled security gates.
It comes as two men died and two women were injured in northern France after attempting the crossing to England.
French authorities said the men, one in his 30s and the other in his 40s, died after leaving the coast at Berck overnight. The women were taken to hospital after suffering burns to large areas of their bodies, the authorities said.
Crossings continued today, with photos showing migrants in lifejackets being brought ashore at the Port of Dover.
Protesters began gathering in Gosport last night after reports emerged that the migrant boat was due to arrive.
A power cut lasting an hour or two is an inconvenience, but a blackout lasting a week or more in the middle of winter would be something quite different. Engineers have suggested that restoring the grid after a nationwide outage could take as long as two weeks, so what should people do if such a disaster were to strike?
Most British homes are surprisingly dependent on electricity, far more so than in the 1970s when the three-day week saw rolling blackouts across the country. Even if you heat your home with gas, your boiler will almost certainly stop working without electricity for its controls and circulation pump. Electric ignition may prevent some gas appliances working. Broadband will disappear, while mobile networks will fail as their backup power runs out. Shops will be unable to take electronic payments and petrol stations won’t be able to operate pumps.
Even mains water supplies could be disrupted during a prolonged blackout. The Government’s emergency preparedness guidance specifically warns that electricity outages can affect water, mobile phones and other services as well as power itself.
So what should households do?
The first category consists of cheap, simple preparations that almost everybody can make.
Every household should have several torches and a good supply of batteries, kept somewhere you can find them in the dark. For elderly relatives, torches should be kept around the house – e.g. the living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and the top and bottom of the stairs – injuries from falling in the dark will be particularly dangerous in a blackout when calling for help could be difficult.
Head torches are particularly useful because they leave both hands free. Rechargeable torches are fine, but for a prolonged blackout it is sensible to have something that takes ordinary replaceable batteries as well.
Candles and matches are useful backups, but they should be in stable, heat-resistant holders, kept well away from curtains and other combustible material and never left unattended.
A wind-up radio is also worth having. The Government recommends keeping a radio and writing down the frequencies of useful stations, as this is likely to be the only method by which people will be able to receive emergency communications such as information about local food distribution.
Power banks are now cheap enough that every household should have at least one, but it’s important to keep them charged. Larger portable power packs can run laptops, lights and small appliances for far longer, although they become progressively more expensive as their capacity increases. Small solar power chargers are relatively cheap these days and can help operate small devices.
Think about food and water
You don’t need a bunker full of survival rations, but a store cupboard containing food that keeps well and is easy to cook is sensible. Tinned soup, beans, fish and meat, crackers, biscuits, chocolate, nuts and other calorie-dense foods all keep well. If you have a safe means of cooking, pasta, rice, porridge and similar staples are cheap, filling and warming. UHT milk is useful. But don’t forget a manual tin opener.
Water matters even more. The Government recommends at least 2.5-3 litres of drinking water per person per day for survival, with considerably more needed if water is also required for cooking and basic hygiene. Keeping enough bottled water for an entire fortnight may be impractical for many households, but even several days’ supply buys valuable time.
During a blackout, keep fridge and freezer doors shut. The Food Standards Agency says a fridge should remain cold for about four hours, while a full freezer may keep food frozen for around 48 hours and a half-full freezer around 24 hours. In sufficiently cold winter weather, food can also be stored outside in a clean, secure container if the outside temperature remains below 8°C.
Keeping warm is likely to be the biggest challenge
Warm clothes, thermals, thick socks, hats, sleeping bags and plenty of blankets cost relatively little and require no energy at all. Rather than trying to keep an entire house warm, close internal doors and curtains and concentrate everyone in one or two rooms. Hot-water bottles are extremely effective if you retain some means of boiling water. Have several rather than one.
Those fortunate enough to have a working fireplace or wood-burning stove have a major advantage, but only if it’s ready to use. Have chimneys swept and flues inspected, and keep a sensible stock of dry firewood or other approved fuel before winter arrives. A neglected fireplace should not suddenly be pressed into service during an emergency, and only appropriate fuel should be used – don’t decide to burn plastic garden furniture as it will make a mess and may give off toxic fumes.
Blackouts are exactly when people will be tempted to improvise, and some improvisations are deadly. Never use a barbecue or outdoor camping stove inside the house – carbon monoxide is colourless and odourless and can kill without warning. Fuel-burning appliances must only be used in accordance with their instructions and with appropriate ventilation. Every home using a fire, stove or other combustion appliance should have working carbon-monoxide alarms as well as smoke alarms.
But by all means fire up the barbecue outside and use it to cook and boil water for hot-water bottles.
Those able to spend more can provide considerably greater resilience
A large battery pack can keep phones, lights, radios and some other equipment operating for days, particularly if electricity is rationed carefully. Homes with solar panels and batteries may have greater resilience, although owners should check whether their particular installation can actually operate when the grid is down: not every domestic solar system can, and in winter output is limited.
A portable generator provides much more power, but introduces significant risks and should not be an impulse purchase when a crisis has already begun. Generators must be operated outside and well away from doors and windows – current UK public-health guidance recommends at least six metres, because of the risk of carbon-monoxide poisoning.
Anyone wanting a generator capable of supplying household circuits should arrange the necessary installation with a competent electrician in advance. Never improvise a connection to household wiring, although many generators have three-pin sockets and are specifically designed to power individual devices using appropriately rated extension leads. Keep connections dry and take care not to overload either the generator or the extension lead. It’s sensible to check beforehand what your home insurer requires and how fuel can legally and safely be stored.
Starlink systems provide satellite-based communications that would be resilient in the case of a blackout, provided you can power your unit.
There are some less obvious preparations too
Keeping some cash at home may be helpful – while many shops won’t be able to operate tills, some may revert to paper accounts, particularly local businesses which have more flexibility. Keep the car reasonably well fuelled during periods of heightened risk, and maintain stocks of essential prescription medicines where possible.
People dependent on electrically powered medical equipment need a specific contingency plan rather than simply an emergency kit. Those eligible should join the Priority Services Register, which can provide additional support during outages and, where possible, advance warning of planned interruptions.
If you need machines for life-saving functions such as breathing, you probably already have a backup generator – make sure it has been serviced and is working correctly. In last year’s Iberian blackout several fatalities were caused by faulty back-up generators. It may be necessary to be admitted to hospital where backup generation is available, and you should have a plan for this.
Preparation should extend beyond your own front door. Know which neighbours are elderly, disabled or otherwise vulnerable, and get to know each other so you are not trying to build relationships and trust on the hop.
None of this requires panic buying or turning the spare bedroom into a warehouse of survival equipment. Much of it is inexpensive, useful in ordinary life and can be accumulated gradually. Resilience is largely about thinking about these things before you need them.
Finally, be ready for when the power comes back on. Switch off ovens, hobs, electric heaters and other appliances when the blackout begins so they don’t suddenly come back on unattended. Unplug sensitive electronics such as televisions and computers to protect them from possible surges, and reconnect appliances gradually once the supply is stable.
Kathryn Porter is an Independent Energy Consultant. She holds a Master’s degree in Physics and an MBA, and is an associate member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies executive council.Subscribe to her blog.
Stop Press: This article might strike some readers as unduly alarmist, but London was hit by a major power cut on Monday morning. The Telegraphhas more.
Nearly all women who attempt to reach the UK in small boats from northern France are raped on their journey, Shabana Mahmoud, the Home Secretary, has said. The Mail has the story.
In an interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast, Shabana Mahmood said sexual abusers would exploit most asylum seekers as long as traffickers continued to decide who came to Britain.
“You can almost guarantee that every woman that’s in the north of France has probably been raped along the journey.
“Some of the men too, they’ve certainly been abused and threatened. That is not the model that should decide whether somebody gets to come to the UK, make this their place of sanctuary and ultimately become one of us.”
About 300 anti-migrant protesters clashed with police on Sunday after dozens of migrants arrived at a historic naval port via small boat using a ‘new route’ to evade detection.
Flares were set off during the stand-off at a marina in Gosport that lasted into the early hours of Monday morning.
The migrants were transported by coach to a processing centre in Kent.
Protesters gathered near Haslar Marina in Gosport where a number of migrants were seen arriving at around 10.15pm – having been transported aboard two RNLI boats late on Sunday evening.
Demonstrators shouted “send them back” and “you’re not welcome”.
The scene marks the second known incident of a landing of a large group of migrants this far west along the south coast in recent years.
Britain used to be famous for its sense of humour. When immigrant outsiders came here wanting to become immigrant insiders, one of the first things they learned to do to fit in was to make jokes about everything. Today, by contrast, the first thing an immigrant has to learn to do to fit in – with the ruling class, at least – is to lose their sense of humour.
British comedy is in crisis. Even industry insiders say so. Comedy campaign groups CRAFT (Comedy Representation Art-Form Trust) and LCA (Live Comedy Association) have justwritten open letters (here and here) to the Government, begging for assistance for comedy clubs, which members say are undergoing financial collapse – particularly due to “heatwaves” which supposedly stop the public from attending them (ironically, they are quite serious in this claim). Writing from one bunch of comedians to another, the campaigners want special Treasury tax breaks for the industry, as well as formal “recognition of comedy as a distinct art form” by Arts Council England – unsubtle code for “give us free money from the taxpayer.”
As regards that final claim, I would have thought the true, most associated word was now “shit”.
For the petitioners, “comedy is everywhere in British culture and nowhere in British policy”. That is precisely how it should be, you Big-State clowns! Such penurious comics should be careful. If comedy does become the business of government, then they may soon find their work being censored on the grounds that certain of their jokes are deemed to be ‘officially unfunny’; which, in practice, would simply be a euphemism for ‘politically incorrect’.
Joke policies
In the very same week these letters were publicised, the UK Green Party did actually launch its own internal in-depth report on what was and was not funny, with party activists receiving training informing them they should maintain detailed records of any jokes fellow members had told to them, “including dates, times [and] locations”, in case anyone later found them to be offensive – particularly if they touched upon sensitive issues like race, religion, sexuality or class. Even if the particular big fat black lesbian affected made a joke about themselves, this was still to be noted down and eliminated, as it nonetheless created “an environment in this space where derogatory jokes are allowed to happen.”
To prevent such jocular genocide occurring again in future, Greens were advised to perform an “audit” of their friendship groups to ensure they were diverse enough so that this simply would not happen: an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman all walk into a pub, and nobody says anything even remotely untoward whatsoever, as diversity is clearly our strength.
Official Green Party advice on what to do if you happen to hear a joke one day. Nowhere does the option ‘laugh’ appear
For a preview of what a future Green-led Ministry of Laughter might one day look like, we should look towards a current controversy involving the quasi-state-run BBC (Bowdlerising British Comedy), which in September decided to mark 20 years since the first broadcast of award-winning sketch-show That Mitchell and Webb Look – by cutting out several sketches, and deeming the show to be “racist”. The now samizdat sketches involved scenarios like English Civil War re-enactors getting bored and deciding to black up and recreate modern-day conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a brownface Amazonian tribe found secretly living behind flower-pots in a garden centre and a woman wearing a burka being an unsuccessful participant in a TV makeover programme.
Even more primly, the BBC also wiped or butchered entire episodes of popular children’s comedy history series Horrible Histories, as they featured jokes about sensitive topics like slavery – despite the fact they pretty obviously were not of a “Let’s bring it back!”-type perspective, but attempting to satirise the practice’s brutality.
One horrified reaction came from Graham Linehan, the cancelled Anglo-Irish comedy writer who today lives in exile in America, as nobody in the UK industry will now touch his work with a bargepole. Not only does it commit the cardinal post-2010s sin of actually being funny, Linehan’s writing is also deemed to be “transphobic”; Channel 4 refuses to re-show an old episode of his sitcom the IT Crowd, as it features a joke about a cross-dresser (see my review of his 2023 autobiography).
Writing in the Telegraph, Linehan observes that most British comedians who get their back-catalogues politically ruined these days, like Mitchell and Webb, either keep silent and go along with it for an easy life, or else actively denounce themselves in classic Soviet show-trial fashion, so as to keep raking in the cash on the panel-show circuit. Because of this cowardice, he says, “somewhere out there, the next generation of comedy writers and performers, the ones who might have pushed the form further, taken bigger risks, made the joke nobody else would touch, will quietly decide it isn’t worth it, and nobody will have to ban anything ever again.” Sounds a bit like how Islam operates in such matters, too…
Islam is a religion of Cleese
Linehan says his trans-joke episode was banned by Channel 4’s woke “religious police”; at least it wasn’t banned by any actual religious police. Another famously expatriate comedian of yore, John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, was also critical of the BBC’s recent censoring of its past output, calling it “social engineering” in action; in the Life of Brian, he had essentially once made an adult version of Horrible Histories himself. He may not find it so easy to create a Muslim sequel to his classic 1970s satire of Christian history about Muhammad, however – not given the current demographics of Great Britain.
Lately, Cleese has somewhat reinvented himself as an online political commentator, frequently of an anti-Islamic nature.
The British cultural heritage is based on Christ's teaching
And Christ's teaching is NOT about acquiring power. Read the Beatitudes !
The Koran's teaching is ALL about acquiring power, killing 'infidels' and imposing Islam on everyone
He has also several times said “London is no longer an English city” and made non-PC jokes like asking Arab TV host Waleed Aly whether his name was “an anagram”. Predictably accused of racism and ‘Islamophobia’, whatever that is, Cleese denied it, saying he is in fact a “culturalist”, not a racist – in that he thinks traditional British culture is innately superior to its traditional Islamic equivalent, with skin colour per se appearing irrelevant to him.
No, it's not racist, it's culturalist
And some cultures are superior in the light on British values
We don't like child marriage, stoning women, clitoral mutilation, throwing gays off high buildings, torturing animals, and systematic inflation of the male ego https://t.co/K0PvpzloD7
But some people do like marrying children and torturing animals, don’t they? And maybe even sometimes torturing children and marrying animals. Here is a recent Daily Sceptic headline:
Well, there’d be no point in a mosque condoning throwing them off short buildings, would there? That’s the kind of joke John Cleese would make about it, anyhow, and for that Muslims would try to cancel him. Mirthless Muslim street-activists are campaigning – thus far unsuccessfully – to get Cleese’s current UK comedy-speaking tour, John Cleese and the Holy Grail, banned from various of its intended venues, as its content could be regarded as “spreading dangerous misinformation and creating hostility towards Muslims.” (Footage here.) One bearded young gentleman advised that “saying things like Islam is all about killing… isn’t comedy”. Indeed not, it’s just the truth.
Without a single shred of comic irony, the street-enforcers told Cleese his work was just “hate-speech and you’re just a hate-preacher” – unlike Hilarious Abu Hamza. Furthermore, it was explained, in the hands of infidels like Cleese, “free speech has become a convenient shield for anti-Muslim hostility and vilification with no consequences”. I’m pretty sure there have been “consequences” for making jokes about Islam in the past, though, haven’t there? Wasn’t there once some slight kerfuffle involving cartoons over in Denmark or other?
The Scary Whitehouse Experience
Further proving there were absolutely no consequences for ever joking about Islam, apart from sometimes being brutally killed, Roshan Muhammed Saleh, editor of hardline UK Muslim news-site 5Pillars, rather tactlessly typed that “If John Cleese, 86, had died a year ago, he would have been remembered as a national treasure.” What a shame someone didn’t chop John’s head off last year, then, because now, says Saleh, “if he were to die tomorrow” John’s alleged “hate-mongering would form a significant part of his legacy.” And if only the Prophet Muhammad had died a year prior to writing the Koran, he wouldn’t have been remembered as being such an incorrigible hate-monger himself, maybe?
Amusingly deeming Islam to be “a relatively safe target”, Saleh called for Cleese’s “deplatforming”; don’t you need a platform to publicly hang someone upon, though? No, because, the editor assured his readers, Islam was a religion of cheese, and so blessed are its cheesemakers:
There have been suggestions online that 5Pillars’ criticism of Cleese, and my personal criticism of him, somehow amount to a threat, with some even insinuating the possibility of violence. That is complete nonsense. So let me state this unequivocally: we are not threatening John Cleese, nor do we want any physical harm to come to him. But we are advocating peaceful, lawful and democratic opposition to his rhetoric. Cleese speaks, we answer. Cleese campaigns against our religion, we expose what he says. Cleese appears at venues, and we are entitled to contact those venues, complain, protest peacefully and ask them why they are providing him with a platform. That is not intimidation; that is free speech. And free speech works in both directions. John Cleese does not possess some special right to speak without being criticised because he created brilliant comedy 50 years ago [back when he was mocking Christ, not Mo, presumably].Nor does he have a right to appear in every theatre that will have him.
Yes he does. He literally does have that right, because that is the law of our land, and the law of our land is not yet shariah. If any given theatre “will have him” then Muslims can’t stop him. Unless, of course, they decide to take matters into their own hands and implicitly intimidate the theatres concerned by loudly protesting outside of it in the name of ‘peace’. Saleh continued:
What we are saying is that respectable institutions should decide if sustained anti-Muslim hate-mongering is compatible with their values. That is particularly relevant as Cleese tours cities and towns with significant Muslim communities [i.e., all of them now]. His September tour includes Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Bedford, among other places. Muslims live, work, pay taxes and contribute to the cultural and economic life of those communities. So those venues should ask themselves a simple question: what message are they sending to their Muslim neighbours when they provide a prestigious stage to somebody who routinely portrays their religion as violent, backward and threatening?
White people also “live, work, pay taxes and contribute to the cultural and economic life of those communities” too, and have done for considerably longer than Islam has ever even existed in these islands. Who the hell do you think you are to be able to tell Monty Python fans what they can and can’t watch on-stage now? If you don’t like the sound of his act, stay at home and watch dire, public-subsidised Muslim BBC trash like Muzlamics or Hajj and Seek, or even some old footage of Dave Allen mocking Catholicism on YouTube, perhaps it would be more to your taste?
Hajj and Sikhsounds like it would be much more diverse
There is considerable comic irony in the prospect of the inventor of the Ministry of Silly Walks one day having his output monitored by a putative Islamo-Leftist Ministry of Silly Talks, but Cleese himself may not find it all too funny.
What he may also find distinctly unamusing is that, if you look at the Live Comedy Association letter begging for ‘free’ taxpayer cash from Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy – the woman with the most mirthful and laughter-loving face on the entire planet – you will find that, alongside comedians, there is also a long list of signatories who are currently MPs in the House of Commons. Amongst these are names like Shockat Adam and Iqbal Mohamed, both on record as desiring the implementation of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’-type neo-blasphemy laws in this country. Neo-blasphemy laws which could, as part of their natural remit, involve the banning of anyone like Cleese making future tasteless jokes about, say, Muhammad being a paedo or a neck-chopper, possibly?
If the letter signatories get their way in both respects, what will stand-ups in the state-subsidised comedy clubs of tomorrow still be free to tell mocking jokes about? Only evil, far-Right white racists and Islamophobes like John Cleese, I suppose. Either that, or bland, PC non-gags, like those of Bernard Righton. Writing this article, as an experiment I asked Google’s woke onboard AI to tell me a “Muslim walks into a bar joke”. This is, genuinely, what the apparently Green Party-neutered bot came up with:
Admittedly, this did make me laugh, but not, perhaps, in the precise way intended. I strongly suspect that thoroughly humourless trends like the above are the true reason Britain’s comedy clubs are now closing down, not “heatwaves”, as industry letter-writers delusionally complain.
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books.
Jeremy Clarkson has said there is no reason to set up a business in Andy Burnham’s Britain as he made a surprise appearance at the Conservative Party conference. The Telegraph has more.
In a surprise appearance at the Conservative Party conference, the television presenter said he would only open a second pub if he did so abroad.
Dismissing the idea of setting up a new business in Britain, Clarkson said: “Why would anybody set up a business in this country right now?”
Labour has hit small businesses with a series of tax rises since taking power in 2024.
Hundreds of business closures have been blamed on a £25bn raid on employers’ National Insurance by Rachel Reeves, John Healey’s predecessor as chancellor.
Combined with several inflation-busting increases to the minimum wage and changes to Covid-era business rates relief, this has made it harder for pubs and shops to hire staff.
Clarkson opened The Farmer’s Dog pub in the Cotswolds, where he also owns the Diddly Squat farm, in August 2024.
However, when asked by Victoria Atkins, the Shadow Environment Secretary, about opening another pub, he replied: “I’ll see if I can do it abroad somewhere. I probably won’t, but I’m dreaming of it.”
On becoming Prime Minister in July, Andy Burnham announced that business rates would be cut by 20% for pubs, clubs and live music venues from April – a partial victory for the Telegraph’s Save Our Pubs campaign.
However, within an hour of the announcement one of Burnham’s Ministers admitted that the two proposed sources of funding for the policy were still being looked at.
A revaluation of business rates came into effect in April at the same time as Covid-era reliefs for the high street, prompting warnings that as many as 340,000 businesses could go to the wall.
In a swipe at Burnham over a planned migrant camp near the Oxfordshire village of Piddington, Clarkson added: “I might have to go to Piddington – that’s abroad, isn’t it?”
Last month, residents of Piddington voted to “secede from the UK” after the Government announced plans to convert a former Army garrison into accommodation for 1,256 male asylum seekers.
Political Betting is a weekly column by Mark Littlewood aimed at people who like gambling on politics.
Despite some evidence of a second Burnham bounce following Labour’s conference, an early election (at least one this year) seems off the table.
A batch of recent polls suggests Labour is in the high 20s, with the most recent survey even suggesting that the party may be as high as 30%. These are the sort of numbers which could lead to an overall Labour majority depending on how the vote splits amongst the other parties and – crucially – where the vote splits. In the new multi-party model of politics, we still don’t really know whether the Reform vote is rising proportionately across the country or is becoming more efficiently concentrated in seats it might actually win.
Similarly, the Conservatives still find themselves a few points behind their tally of 24% at the last election. But if this is consolidated in, say, the LibDem-Tory battlegrounds in the South, it is just about possible Kemi Badenoch could make gains even without any major boost in vote share.
The entropic nature of Britain’s new party system means there are a vast range of possible electoral outcomes and a huge amount of unpredictability. These are optimal conditions for the brave gambler.
My first key observation is that the earlier the election comes, the better this will be for Labour. This isn’t just because I expect the glow around Andy Burnham to fade rapidly. Rather, it is because the timing of the next General Election and the chances of a Labour victory are in no way independent events. Indeed, they are closely connected.
There is little chance that Burnham will fire the starting pistol unless he is very confident that he will win. Such confidence might then turn out to be misplaced (as was Theresa May’s in 2017 when she assumed that a landslide was a near certainty and she ended up limping on with no majority at all). However, all things equal, if I knew for certain now that there’d be an election in 2027 rather than 2029, I’d be strongly inclined to bet on Labour winning (or at least emerging as the largest party).
On the betting exchanges, Labour are about 7/4 to emerge with the highest number of MPs when the next election is called, with Reform at 5/2 and the Tories a little shy of 4/1. All are long odds against to win a majority as a hung Parliament remains a 4/6 shot.
Typically, I scour the markets for attractive long odds bets. However, I find myself tempted by the odds of Labour failing to emerge as the largest cohort in the Commons even though it offers a return of barely 50% on my stake.
My first hunch is that Burnham will never secure a large enough poll lead to go to the electorate early. This is closely associated to my feeling that underlying factors in the economy – immigration control, economic growth, public services and security amongst them – will worsen (and the public perception could become even worse than the objective facts). So, my mid-point prediction is that Labour will go all the way to 2029 with its public support deteriorating as the months unfold.
This might make backing Reform winning the most seats seem the attractive bet, but I think the Tory-Reform battle is the most unpredictable element of modern British electoral politics (as is whether it ends up in a war to the death or some sort of truce).
I am also starting to gather some evidence that tactical voting (often assumed to be the secret weapon of the Left) could be a greater factor amongst Right voters than is generally assumed.
In some opinion polls, a strong reluctance can be found (particularly amongst Conservative voters) to switch to the better-placed party on the Right-of-centre. This also finds some echoes in a cluster of local council by-elections where a split between Reform and the Tories (and sometimes Restore) has led to a Left-leaning candidate emerging victorious.
In contrast, Parliamentary contests paint a rather different picture. Including the Caerphilly by-election (for the Welsh Senate), there have been six of these since the last General Election. They aren’t perfectly representative of the wider country as a whole and there are all sorts of riders about why mapping by-election voting behaviour onto a general election is fraught with risk.
Nevertheless, they do seem to indicate a keen propensity amongst Right-leaning voters to coalesce around whichever of the Tory or Reform candidate has the best prospect of victory. Putting aside Restore (who only fielded a candidate in one of these six seats), in total, 84% of the combined Conservative-Reform vote rallied around the candidate with the best chance of winning, with only 16% being ‘wasted’ on the party with no realistic prospects of success. If you strip out the by-election in Arbroath (where it was not at all clear whether the Tories or Reform were best placed to win and thus tactical voting was nearly impossible), the numbers become starker still. Across the other five seats, nearly 90% of the Conservative-Reform vote coalesced around the better placed of the two Right-leaning candidates and only 10% went for the weaker of the two parties.
If, in a General Election, voters of this ilk are willing to lend their vote to whoever is best placed to snatch the seat, it might be that the divide on the Right-of-centre ends up being less punishing that most current models suggest. This becomes doubly true if, by 2029, the 40-45% of the public currently in the combined Conservative-Reform column see ‘kicking Labour out’ as their overwhelming priority.
All of this seems to mount up to a very plausible scenario in which Labour comes second or worse in terms of MPs returned when we next hold Westminster elections. I’m going to have a sizeable nibble at 4/7.
Whilst I’m in the mood to place some short odds bets, I should add I’m keeping a beady eye on Restore who, ludicrously, are about 16/1 to win the largest number of seats. Betting against this yields only a 6% return and potentially ties up your stake for nearly three years. However, if those are still the prevailing odds on the exchanges a few weeks out, I’ll also be snatching up the 1/16 that Restore don’t make that sort of headway.
Mark Littlewood is a former Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Director of PopCon.
Satire has become redundant. The Nation, an old abolitionist publication founded in 1865 and now proudly the flagship of the Left, has just anointed Germany and California an “environmental superpower”. The author, Mark Hertsgaard, is the magazine’s Environment Correspondent and also Executive Director of Covering Climate Now, a foundation-funded media campaign that the Nation itself co-founded. His two showpiece claims are an interview that Gavin Newsom gave to Covering Climate Now and a poll-based crusade, the 89% Project, run by, naturally, Covering Climate Now and endorsed, in the AP story the piece cites, by an oat-milk company. A perfectly closed loop, which is more than can be said for the energy systems it celebrates.
Strip away the self-congratulation and the case is this. The world’s third- and fourth-largest economies have become a climate vanguard. Berlin has pledged, for the first time, to end fossil fuel use by 2045. It is not clear whether this is on a ‘Net Zero’ basis or if it actually means no fossil fuel use at all. Mr Newsom says California has run on 100% clean electricity on nine days out of 10 this year. What the Nation never asks is whom this performance serves.
“Britain loses £120 billion as billionaires flee under Labour” – More than $160 billion has left the UK since Labour came to power as the collective wealth of departing billionaires continues to drain from the country, reports the Telegraph.
“Green stance on Zionism is threat to Britain” – Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis has condemned the Green Party’s anti-Zionist policy as a “threat to British Jews and to Britain”, notes the Telegraph.
“A vote for me is a vote for Israel, Polanski said” – Zack Polanski is facing accusations of ‘betraying his principles’ over 2016 remarks in which he reportedly said voting for him was a vote for Israel, reports the Telegraph.
“Mosque praised by Andy Burnham just held terrorist’s funeral” – The Manchester Central Mosque, which Andy Burnham visited and praised during his time as mayor, has come under scrutiny after hosting the funeral of a Taliban terrorist, notes the Mail.
“Lisa Nandy delays publication of critical report on UAE” – The Culture Secretary has further delayed the publication of a critical report on the failed UAE bid for the Telegraph, two and a half years after it was completed.
“Pedro Sanchez gambles on snap election in Spain” – Pedro Sanchez has called a snap election after his measures to relieve Spain’s housing crisis were rejected by parliament, reports the Telegraph.
“European Left on verge of collapse” – Sanchez’s decision to call a snap election – following his earlier 2023 defeat in regional and local polls – points to a wider crisis engulfing the European Left, argues James Crisp in the Telegraph.
“Russia suspected plague outbreak: how worried should we be?” – A researcher has died, possibly from pneumonic plague following a lab accident, though experts say the disease is treatable and far less likely to spread than COVID-19, writes Rhys Blakely in the Times.
“Democratic Socialists want a Green New Deal” – At CFACT, Craig Rucker writes that the Democratic Socialists of America are openly pushing for a Green New Deal – and a great deal more besides.
“COP31: Oh not another one!” – On the Right Times Substack, Ivor Williams argues that COP31’s move to Turkey marks a damning ‘progression’ story for the climate conference – with delegate numbers, hot air and emissions all rising by billions.
