James Ball

London

Political Editor at The New European

Fellow at Demos

Political editor @TheNewEuropean | Fellow @Demos | Advisory Council @NewDiplomacyUK | Author | Personal account. 🏳️‍🌈

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Articles

Keir Starmer: the global right’s new menace

1 week ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

In these high-stress times, almost all of us need an outlet for our anger, if for no other purpose than catharsis. For some news outlets, such as Fox News, it’s also a commercial necessity – merely praising Donald Trump isn’t going to keep the viewers tuned in. There has to be some kind of menace, too. But that source of fear and anger can’t be anyone currently in power in the US, given that they’re all Republicans.
Everyone hates Elon

2 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

Elon Musk is struggling to catch a break. He arrived into the federal government with great fanfare a few months ago, only for his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to start petering out almost immediately, though not without doing huge damage to the US infrastructure. Donald Trump has now confirmed that Musk will be leaving government “soon”. Even as sales of electric cars increase, demand for Teslas is slumping across the world, fuelled by large-scale protests outside his dealerships.
Was Trump’s market carnage the plan all along?

2 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

Donald Trump’s tariffs have done what everyone who took him seriously on the topic – fewer people than it should have been – warned they would: global markets have been in freefall. Some markets have seen their worst days of the 21st century, and the worst might still be to come: there is still widespread belief among many trading desks that Trump does not actually intend to enforce tariffs at the level he announced on April 2.
Were Trump’s idiotic tariffs really generated by AI?

2 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

You don’t have to be an expert to know what happened on global markets after Donald Trump’s tariff announcement was… quite bad. The plummeting lines on the charts speak for themselves, but there was no shortage of expert pundits happy to explain just how bad they were in any case.
Why do we all feel so much poorer?

3 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

What has been dubbed “Awful April” – because of a combination of council tax hikes, increased energy bills and other cost of living miseries – has one ray of sunshine for low-wage workers. The minimum wage for all ages is increasing well beyond inflation. What is the national minimum wage for 2025?
Why Big Tech has never been weaker

3 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

Microsoft, the creator of the world’s first “beloved” “AI” assistant Clippy, turns 50 this week. Apple also celebrates its birthday this week, but is a year younger, while the rest of the big tech crop are a couple of decades more recent – Amazon is 31 years old, and even Google and Facebook are approaching 30. The era of the big tech giants being new, fresh or anything resembling startups ended long ago.
Is this really Labour's vision?

4 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

At the core of Rachel Reeves’ spring statement was a bizarrely precise figure: at the end of Reeves’ last budget, she had £9.93 billion of “headroom” against her fiscal rules in 2029/30. After all of the measures she announced to cope with the worsening global economy and the UK’s lower growth, the spring statement left her with… £9.93 billion of headroom. Right back where she started, with pinpoint precision.
We’re not ready for the next pandemic

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

This week marks five years since the UK’s first Covid lockdown, and the lurching sense of unreality that came along with it has already been all but forgotten in our folk memory. For a time, it was illegal to leave our home without a good reason – an unimaginable upheaval in a free society, which we accepted as the cost of keeping people alive. The Covid pandemic, at least in its early days, was the stuff of movies.
Trump is about to blow up the spring statement

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | James Ball

On Wednesday, Rachel Reeves will stand up and give the spring statement – which is expected to be a series of almost entirely bad news. She is likely to have to tell the nation that growth is going to be lower than expected, projected government revenues are down, and that she is tackling this with a series of cuts that amount to austerity in everything but name.
What’s the point of politics?

1 month ago | newhumanist.org.uk | James Ball

Britain’s Labour Party, finally back in power after 14 years of opposition, are now having to navigate their many internal divisions. Over the last decade, the issue of welfare has proven particularly fraught. Founded as the party of workers, Labour went on to create much of the modern welfare state. Given this history, the choice to support a more generous provision of benefits might seem uncontroversial. In practice, it has proven anything but.