Endless illegal immigration, unaffordable energy, draconian speech policing – we're being conditioned to accept outrageous things as normal, says Nick Rendell. Now add to that economic crashes.
Exclusive: Douglas Alexander, on trade delegation to India, talks up economic benefits of joint trading arrangements with Europe
Britain will benefit from much closer trading relations with the EU even if that means giving up its ability to negotiate free trade agreements, the Scotland secretary has said.
Douglas Alexander helped negotiate deals with India and the US when he was a trade minister under Keir Starmer.
Prime minister reiterates UK backing after the Ukrainian president’s latest round of difficulties with Donald Trump
Andy Burnham will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Downing Street on Wednesday as the UK seeks to further underline its support for the Ukrainian president, in contrast to his difficulties with Donald Trump.
The UK prime minister said his message to Zelenskyy and his country would be: “We are with you for as long as it takes.”
The prime minister is correct to judge the time is right to push for closer links with the EU. The political risk is far outweighed by the potential rewards
The German philosopher GWF Hegel famously evoked the owl of Minerva when discussing the historical wisdom that comes through hindsight. This autumn, she has flown tirelessly over the landscape of British politics. Party conference season was dominated by conflicting Labour and Conservative accounts of the 1970s and 80s. And a decade after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, Andy Burnham this week abandoned all equivocation over the damage – economic but also strategic – that resulted from that decision.
Having declared that it is time to “face up to the reality that Brexit has done more harm than good”, Mr Burnham told the House of Commons on Monday that it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to explore all options for closer relations with Brussels. Though he confirmed that in this parliament he will honour the red lines in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto, all bets will subsequently be off.
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Almost half of workers helping families care for children, older people, and people with disabilities, who provide vital domestic support in Europe, have considered quitting due to low pay and bad working conditions, a labour-union report found on Tuesday (13 October).
The 2026 personal and household services (PHS) employment monitor drew on more than 8,000 responses from workers, service users, and employers in 36 countries.
Around one in four respondents worked between 35 and 40 hours per week.
Meanwhile, six in 10 workers reported work-related musculoskeletal disorders, including back pain and tendon inflammation.
One in four also said they had experienced or witnessed verbal abuse, while nearly 15 percent had experienced either sexual harassment, physical, and/or sexual violence.
Care poviders’ mental health is impacted, with around six out of 10 reporting sleeping issues.
But these same workers play “an essential role in providing a dignified life for everybody in our ageing European societies,” Oliver Roethig, regional secretary of UNI Europa said in a statement.
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Amid renewed speculation about an early General Election, now is the time to look at whom to put money on as the next party leaders, says Mark Littlewood in his latest Political Betting column for the Daily Sceptic.
Angela Rayner's department funnelled taxpayers' cash into Left-wing propaganda seeking to prevent a Reform or Tory government in the wake of the Southport murders.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, has said he does not agree with his colleague Suella Braverman’s assertion that black people cannot be English.
Asked about her views in an interview on Sky News, Yusuf said:
In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. I think the argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me.
Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English is an alien concept to me.
I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.
To say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage. The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English.
I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it’s not racist to say this.
PM hails next month’s ‘reset’ summit as first step to closer ties, but tensions over trade may prove problematic
Andy Burnham has promised a “serious dialogue” over the UK’s future place in Europe, saying the existing relationship is “not good enough” as he framed next month’s Brussels summit as a possible first step to EU membership.
The prime minister said Britain must take a “clear-eyed rational look” at its long-term relationship with the bloc to boost economic growth and control immigration, which needed to go beyond Labour’s existing red lines.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, is speaking now. He started his speech with an account of a 73-year-old woman dying in North Wales after having to wait 23 hours for an ambulance, and he sought to link this to immigration.
He said:
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that 15,000 people across Britain died last year due to excess wait times for emergency treatment. That’s 300 people a week, 300 lives destroyed, 300 families devastated.
And that number has increased tenfold over the last decade. This is a moral outrage, and it is a direct result of decisions made by Tory and Labour governments.
I don’t think that’s because he wants to have a fight over the European Union. I think that’s because he knows what we’re talking about today impacts hard in what is known as the red wall.
Zack Polanski is on the brink of the sack as Greens leader today after being humiliatingly beaten in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, trailing more than 3,000 votes behind Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali.
Andy Burnham's vision of the "common good" – with Net Zero at its heart – is just reheated Fabian socialism, says Dr Tilak Doshi – and the fingerprints of Left-wing economist Mariana Mazzucato are all over it.
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.
Labour may be enjoying a Burnham bounce, but Mark Littlewood still thinks the smart option is to bet against the Prime Minister winning the next General Election. He explains why in the Daily Sceptic.
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 recent comments from a Government Minister dismissing pubs and black Labradors as "far Right" only confirm that Labour is fast becoming an army of power-mad killjoys, says Alexander McKibbin.
Andy Burnham plans to pass a law scrapping the triple lock before the next election despite Labour pledging in its 2024 manifesto to keep it intact and the PM himself previously saying it would stay until 2030.
So, this is Andy Burnham's solution to soaring energy prices: nationalisation and relitigating the 1970s. It's just a shame, says Ben Pile, that energy was far cheaper under Thatcher than in our Net Zero era.
Amidst all the sentimental populist fluff, a political theory of sorts could be discerned in Andy Burnham's conference speech, says Professor James Alexander. Let's call him Our Andy-with-his-10-year-Plandy.