James Ball

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

There was no real reason for the UK to be the first country to agree a “deal” with Donald Trump to mitigate the damage of his erratic and devastating global tariffs. The UK is less affected than most countries, trades less in goods with America than others, and was exempted from many of the harshest measures.

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

Robert Jenrick is not a man who can be accused of letting anything stand in the way of his open campaign to supplant Kemi Badenoch as leader of the remnants of the Conservative Party. His latest salvo in that battle came after Labour secured a post-Brexit trade deal with India that the Conservatives had promised for more than a decade. “This trade deal means Indian workers here for less than 3 years will not pay National Insurance in the UK,” Jenrick posted on Elon’s Musk’s X.

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

In opposition, the simple answer often works: you are battling for a few seconds of airtime anywhere you can get it, and so the short, sharp, popular answer is the good one. The difference in government is that you can actually make it happen. You also have to deal with the consequences. Promising to end the practice of placing asylum seekers in hotels, exactly the kind of socially conservative policy the government is embracing, is a great example of those unintended consequences.

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

There are few things in politics so seductive as a simple answer. A welfare benefit costing billions is going mostly to the people who don’t need it? Scrap it. Reform are winning in areas with Labour MPs? Fight for their votes. The public are unhappy with asylum seekers being housed in hotels? Put them in tents instead. In opposition, the simple answer often works: you are battling for a few seconds of airtime anywhere you can get it, and so the short, sharp, popular answer is the good one.

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

For the last 10 months, voters have been offered three variations of the Reform agenda – a watered-down version with a red rosette, a chaotic flavour with a deep blue one, and the Faragist original in cyan. At the local elections on Thursday, they opted for the original flavour in their droves: the results are at the very top end of the best-case scenarios for Reform, and for the Conservatives in particular are even worse than they were predicted to be.