uk politics
‘Red Wall’ Voters No Longer Trust the Conservative Party and are Switching to Labour
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The Labour Party is now more trusted than the Conservatives in the ‘Red Wall’ seats responsible for the Party’s 2019 election victory, new polling data has found.
Examining 40 Red Wall seats, all of which with the exception of Hartlepool were won by the Conservatives in the 2019 election, polling firm Redfield and Walton Strategies has found that Labour lead the Conservatives by 24%, an increase of 8% since the most recent poll. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have slumped to 26%, their lowest vote share in a Red Wall constituency since June 25th, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s approval rating registered at -21%, its lowest since early July.
Redfield and Wilton strategies found that the 10% of respondents that were undecided as to who they would vote for comprised 12% of 2019 Conservative voters, yet just three per cent of 2019 Labour voters. 84% of those who voted Labour 4 years ago said that they would do so again compared to just 50% of 2019 Conservative voters, as Labour led the Conservatives by 21% with the inclusion of undecided respondents.
Trust in the Conservatives is Waning
The data found that 45% of Red Wall respondents did not trust the Conservatives to manage the economy, an increase of four percentage points compared to the most recent poll, while just 12% significantly trusted the Party, down 5% from October 22nd. Indeed, Labour are now more trusted than the Conservatives to tackle crime and immigration, issues typically prioritised by traditionally - minded voters, as Keir Starmer’s Party has amassed a 13% lead on both issues.
Indeed, Redfield and Wilton strategies found that respondents trusted Labour more than the Conservatives on every policy issue listed; Labour led by more than 25 percentage points in supporting the NHS, where 45% of voters trusted them compared with 16% for the Conservatives, and tackling poverty, where 40% of respondents trusted Labour and 15% trusted the Conservatives. Labour also led by 23% on addressing the housing crisis and by 24% on ‘representing the interests of the North’.
The data, which was published on November 19th, shortly before Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the recent Autumn Statement, arguably reflects a broader regional realignment, as Red Wall respondents were significantly more likely to trust Labour in addressing regional disparities. Despite the Conservatives having promised to deliver “higher wages, a higher living wage, and higher productivity” in the aftermath of the 2019 election, the Party has further entrenched regional inequities, as the Redfield and Wilton poll found that 65% of Red Wall respondents did not believe that the Conservatives had taken adequate measures to address the cost of living crisis.
Yet the Autumn statement has been criticised as a measure which may further widen regional inequalities; think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has found that “for every £100 Jeremy Hunt spent on personal tax cuts, £46 will benefit the richest fifth of households. Only £3 of every £100 of tax cuts will go to the worst-off families,” arguing that Hunt’s tax cuts “will mainly benefit people in London & the South East of England”. Indeed, those living in London and the South East of England stand to gain an average of £319 and £290 per working age person per year from the Chancellor’s National Insurance reductions, while those in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and Wales will accrue just £192, £214 and £211 respectively.
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A Widening Regional Gap
IPPR’s principal economist and head of quantitative research, Henry Parkes, stated that the cuts would “disproportionately benefit the richest areas of the country most – the opposite of levelling up”. “More broadly these tax cuts are accompanied by plans to make deep cuts in public services and investment in the future - an approach that commands very little support from the public and will make it harder, not easier, for the UK economy to grow as it needs to,” he added.
Analysis published by the Resolution Foundation concluded that households across the country will be, on average, £1,900 worse off than at the beginning of this Parliament, as real disposable household incomes reset to decline by 3.1% between December 2019 and January 2025.. Meanwhile, the richest fifth of the population are set to gain, on average, 5 times more than the bottom fifth from the Statement’s tax and benefit measures, while the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will see its budget cut by 14%, the equivalent of £17 billion, between 2022/3 and 2027/8.
Moreover, according to OBR estimates, living standards are set to be “3.5% lower in 2024-2025 than their pre-pandemic levels,” representing “the largest reduction in living standards since ONS records began in the 1950s”.
The tax cuts and benefit measures outlined in the Autumn Statement are unlikely to address broader trends indicating widening regional economic disparities, which have been highlighted by Redfield and Wilton’s polling data. Stagnating real wages, which are not due to recover to pre - 2008 levels until 2028, and sluggish business investment, which has increased by less than 1% in real terms since 2016, have ensured that even the £4.5 billion worth of investment in advanced manufacturing guaranteed by the Chancellor is unlikely to rejuvenate economic activity, particularly given declining disposable incomes.
Hannah Peaker, Director of Policy and Advocacy at think tank the New Economics Foundation (NEF) described the Statement as a “living standards disaster,” arguing that “a small cut to National Insurance will provide little relief, and it will benefit the wealthiest households and regions the most – at the same time as forcing further cuts to our already fragile public services.”
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“In the long run, any plan to tackle these issues needs to grasp the fundamental drivers of regional inequalities, which will require giving local areas the powers and funding to make long-term investments in things like housing, transport and places,” she added.
The NEF’s research situated the Autumn Statement within the context of broader regional economic stagnation, concluding that average incomes in the North East have fallen by more than £1,300 since 2015, a figure which stands at £1,000 for all incomes across Northern households.
Redfield and Wilton’s research has shown that following prolonged wage stagnation and declining regional investment, the same Red Wall areas which largely voted for the Conservatives in 2019 are rapidly losing trust in the government, regarding Labour as more competent on a series of issues including those traditionally prioritised by Conservatives. Viewed within the context of the recent Autumn Statement, the polling suggests that prolonged regional underinvestment and the inequalities it has generated may incur severe electoral implications for the government.
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Half of all Local Authorities in England at Risk of Going Bust Next Year
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Half of all the 350 local councils in England could be at risk of going bust next year unless urgent action is now taken by the Government, the Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove has been warned.
Clive Betts, the Labour chair of the Commons Levelling up, Housing and Communities Committee, has written to the minister in advance of his appearance before the committee next week expressing their concern, following an inquiry which revealed the financial distress currently facing councils across the country.
In his letter to Gove he quotes John Fuller the Vice-chairman of the Local Government's Resources and Economy panel and the Conservative leader of South Norfolk council, warning that: "We are probably at an inflection point, where the number of authorities contemplating issuing 114 [bankruptcy] notices is becoming more general, as opposed to the specific reasons we have seen thus far.
"There is a general understanding that if not this year, next year, about half of the authorities will be in distress. That is a significant number. “
The committee found that the situation had been made significantly worse by a huge backlog in auditing of local councils because they could not get private firms to do the work.
So far six authorities have had to declare they have run out of money – Labour run London borough of Croydon, Conservative run Thurrock, Liberal Democrat run Woking; Labour run Slough, Labour run Birmingham and now joined by Labour run Nottingham. This is leading to huge increases in council tax and services being pared to the legal minimum.
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Critics say that some cases – such as in Croydon and Thurrock - have been largely caused by bad decision making and risky commercial ventures which ran into trouble. However, the growing scale of the problem goes well beyond local issues.
Mr Betts writes: “Throughout our inquiry, we have heard from councillors, officers, and independent experts who have informed us that many local authorities face a difficult financial situation, with severe demand and cost pressures impacting on local authorities’ ability to deliver key services to their residents. This situation is becoming untenable for some local authorities and greater central Government support is clearly required.”
Among the councils complaining about support from Government include Conservative controlled North Yorkshire, which covers Rishi Sunak’s Richmond constituency,
Gary Fielding, an official from the council is quoted by Mr Betts as saying “We have moved from having one or two councils, with particular issues—whether it is maverick behaviour or leadership—being affected, to having what I regard as good councils, run by good officers and with political stability, now facing existential challenges.”
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Mr Sunak has so far used the crisis in councils to blame Labour. He cited Birmingham’s crisis an example of what would happen if Labour was in government, condemned Labour run Kirklees Council which runs services in Huddersfield as “not fit for purpose” and he said on Nottingham “working people are paying the price” for Labour councils' “financial mismanagement” after Nottingham City Council went bust.
However a recently published analysis by Moody’s, the credit rating agency has singled out 20 councils notably a slew of councils in Surrey, West Sussex and Essex that had high debt ratios. These include Spelthorne, Surrey Heath, Worthing, Runnymede, Brentwood, Uttlesford, Guildford, Adur and Epsom and Ewell. These are all councils that the Conservatives lost a lot of votes and some like Worthing and Surrey Heath- which is Gove’s own constituency- where Labour and the Liberal Democrats gained control.
Unlike the big cities affected they represent small towns and rural and suburban areas.
Government Refuses to Expand List of Accepted Voter IDs Despite Thousands Being Turned Away From Polls
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The Government has rejected calls to let voters bring alternative forms of voter identification following May’s elections, despite at least 14,000 voters being turned away from polling stations and denied a vote in England.
Campaigners - and the official elections watchdog - had called for the Government to expand the list of acceptable photo IDs following voters’ disenfranchisement in the local elections.
But responding to the Electoral Commission today, minister Simon Hoare said: “The Government has been unable to identify any additions that would succeed in significantly increasing coverage, in the groups identified and more generally… Many of the forms of photographic identification considered during our review would also risk undermining the security element of the policy, as their application process is not sufficiently robust".
The voter ID rules - which former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg MP has admitted were a form of ‘gerrymandering’ to bolster the governing party - currently exclude several forms of ID used by young people, including Young Persons’ Railcards and some forms of student ID.
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The minister said: “The key challenge is the diminishing return of including additional documents on the list. Research by the Government and the Electoral Commission has shown consistently that the vast majority of the electorate (96%) hold a form of photographic identification that is on the existing list.
“As such it is likely that a similar percentage of the holders of any potential additional document will already also hold another document that is on the current list and therefore already accepted – as such the addition would not be able to significantly increase coverage.”
Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Housing, Communities & Local Government, Helen Morgan MP said the Government's response was a "sick joke".
"The Conservative party is running scared of democratic accountability. The Voter ID legislation brought in by this Conservative government is corrosive to our democracy.
"Voter ID at the local elections was a shambles. Now this Conservative government is doubling down. They are content to sit on their hands and witness another election plagued by chaos while people's voices are being denied," Morgan told Byline Times.
Tom Brake, director of campaign group Unlock Democracy, added: “There is still time to pull the plug on this unnecessary, expensive and discriminatory measure. Photo voter ID must be scrapped.”
The Government appears to be relying on councils’ free Voter Authority Certificates (VAC), which are offered to those who lack other forms of accepted identification.
But an independent report for the Government by IFF found that awareness of the free ID is very low, with only 21% of voting-age adults and 26% of those without accepted photographic IDs being aware of it in May. The Government says improving awareness is now a priority.
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The Government also rebuffed a call from the Electoral Commission to extend the deadline for applying for free voter certificates, which is cut off six working days before a poll. Ministers say they do not want to put extra burdens on electoral officers by having a deadline closer to polling day.
The Conservatives are also firmly opposing the use of ‘attestation’ or 'vouching' at polling stations - where someone with ID can attest that someone who lacks it is who they say they are. Ministers claim ‘vouching’ could compromise the integrity of the system.
Ministers have also rejected calls for the impact of voter ID to be recorded at each election. Two more General Elections will be monitored comprehensively for numbers turned away. After that, it will be up to individual returning officers, making it very difficult to get a national picture on the number of people denied a vote.
All voters in the UK will have to bring photo ID at next year’s General Election. Scotland and Wales have not introduced voter ID for local elections, but must follow UK-wide rules for parliamentary ones. Northern Ireland already used voter ID following mass fraud allegations related to sectarian voting.
Dawn Butler Hits Out at 'Gerrymandering'
Labour MP Dawn Butler told Byline Times the ID policy was "yet more gerrymandering from the Tories."
"Data shows thousands were turned away in May, and now they are refusing measures to prevent it happening again. We should be trying to extend the franchise, not decrease it - which is what the Tories are doing by refusing to add reasonable extra forms of voter ID. I believe it is discriminatory and serves only to disenfranchise people," she added.
"Never forget when the mask slipped and Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted voter ID laws were introduced to gerrymander elections for the Tories.
"The message is clear: the Conservative Party does not want you to use your right to vote," Butler said.
New Research on ID Rollout
Official analysis by IFF Research for the Government has also been published, analysing the impact of the introduction of photographic voter ID.
The report notes some "confusion" among polling station staff regarding why certain types of photographic IDs were accepted and others were not. It also finds that allegations of personation (impersonation fraud) in the May 2023 elections were very low - consistent with previous elections. There were also concerns that some local election offices may not be able to handle a surge in applications for free Voter Authority Certificates in a General Election.
Commenting on the findings, Tom Brake said: "This report contains a statement of the ‘bleeding obvious’ - those without accepted photographic identification were much more likely to say that the voter identification requirement made them less likely to vote.
"What the report lacks is any real thought about what to do about it. With 14,000 turned away in May, we are on track to see more than 100,000 people turned away from the polling stations at the next General Election."
The IFF Research shows that the people most likely to have heard nothing at all about the ID requirements were people who rarely or never vote at local elections (18%), ethnic minorities (12%) and younger adults (11% of those aged 18-34).
Labour refused to say whether it would repeal the ID requirements if in government, when asked by Byline Times earlier this year. The Lib Dems back repeal of the ID rules. The full list of acceptable IDs is published here.
Byline Times has extensively covered the voter ID rollout and will be monitoring further developments.
ShoutOut UK and the Greater London Authority have launched a new WhatsApp chat bot to give advice on getting ID and registering to vote. Add +44 7908 820136 to use it.
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Government Challenged Over Massive Hike to Election Spending Limit Which is Set to Benefit Conservatives
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Lords have challenged the Government over hikes to maximum election spending limits for parties, after ministers quietly raised the election spending cap by millions of pounds without a vote last week.
Lib Dem peer Lord Rennard told the Lords on Wednesday: “Not one of the last five Governments have seen fit to increase the spending limits for political parties. So I wonder what is different about this Government?
“In the last five elections, only one party, the Conservative Party, has come close to spending towards the election expense limit. So why does it now have to be increased by 80%? Which party will benefit?”
And in a jibe at Rishi Sunak, Lord Rennard added: “Boris Johnson managed to win the last general election by spending £16m pounds. So why does this Government seem to think that it needs to spend up to £36m pounds to try and get reelected and what will those donors expect in return for this cash?”
Baroness Penn, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Levelling Up, said it had been a “long time” since campaign spending limits were adjusted for inflation, with some having not changed since 2000.
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“This means that as prices rise over time, the limits are effectively reduced. Parliament anticipated this when the limits were set, which is why the legislation allows for them to be adjusted to account for inflation. The Government has now begun making these adjustments to ensure spending limits are restored in real terms,” Baroness Penn said.
It comes as figures from the House of Lords library show that the Conservatives got closest to reaching the spending limits of around £19m (below) at the last General Election.
One peer quizzed the minister about allegations from Lee Anderson MP that the Reform Party had offered to effectively pay him hundreds of thousands of pounds to defect from the COnservatives to the hard-right party. Baroness Penn replied: “I'm not sure exactly [what] my noble friend is referring to” - but added it seemed like a “serious matter.”
Another peer said donations for the first six months of this year showed that the three largest donations were to the Conservative Party - including two individual donations of more than £5m. “One of them came from a joint British-Egyptian national, who was a minister of a previous Egyptian Government [Mohamed Mansour], and his interests appear to be primarily based in Dubai.
“The other is someone who is listed on Companies House as an Indian national [Amit Lohia]...Is it not time that the Government became much stricter on the size [of donations]?”
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Conservative frontbencher Baroness Penn said the Government had “no plans to limit the size of donations that are made”, claiming that there are “procedures in place to ensure there's transparency.”
Labour left-winger Lord Prem Sikka went further than others, telling the chamber: “The rich don't actually donate money [to parties] - they invest and they expect a return.” He called for the minister to consider introducing a law which would require political parties to state what they’ve promised in return for donations. The minister rejected the suggestion.
Multiple Conservative Party treasurers of recent years, including the current Treasurer, have donated a million-pounds or more to the party.
Faced with further questions, the minister insisted that the “alternative to donations is Government funding of parties and campaigning…that’s not something we on these benches wish to see.” And she heaped praise on party donors who she said “make huge contributions to society”.
Parties do already receive public funding, known as “short money” to conduct their parliamentary operations.
Figures below via the House of Lords library and Lord Rennard.
The Conservatives Got Closest to Hitting Spending Limits at the Last Election PartyTotal expenditureNumber of candidatesSpending limit (£30,000 x number of candidates)% of spending limit spentConservative and Unionist Party£16,486,696.60635£19,050,000.0086.5Labour Party£12,034,416.48581£17,430,000.0069Co-operative Party£55,198.6650£1,500,000.003.7Labour and Co-operative combined£12,089,615.14631£18,930,000.0063.9Liberal Democrats£14,426,930.65611£18,330,000.0078.7Green Party£476,868.70497£14,910,000.003.2Scottish National Party (SNP)£1,004,952.7359£1,770,000.0056.8Plaid Cymru£183,914.5536£1,080,000.0017UK Independence Party (UKIP)£8,761.0044£1,320,000.000.7Brexit Party (Reform UK)£5,038,576.70275£8,250,000.0061.1
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WATCH: Nigel Farage Used ‘Homophobic Racial Slur’ in Personal Message Video
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EDITOR'S NOTE
This article contains racially offensive language which readers will find distressing
Nigel Farage told a gay NHS worker they would “get nog dick for Christmas” in a message branded “racist, homophobic and ableist” by its recipient, Byline Times can reveal.
The politician charged around £75 for the recording in which he directed the allegedly racial slur – a reference to a black man’s body part – and another about a mental health condition, at the male mental health worker through the clip-sharing service Cameo.
The personalised message, sent on 23 December 2021, had been paid for by a man whom Farage had, five months earlier, been warned supported “the enforced deportation of Britons, incarceration and sterilisation based on skin colour” and the establishment of an “ethno-state”.
In the scripted 34-second clip, Farage said: “A message from [name], delivered by me Nigel Farage. You are a bit of an old loser. I diagnose you with ‘ID*D’, yes Intelligence Deficit [name] Disorder’.
“Now I’ve been sipping martinis on the beach with all the money from all these videos, which is absolutely marvellous. It’s really great that I am being paid... to insult you.
“That’s what [name] wanted me to do and I don’t find it difficult after all my years in the European Parliament.
“Meanwhile, you will get n*g dick for Christmas.”
The Cameo site and app allows fans to pay for personalised video messages, with more than 30,000 celebrities accessible via the platform. Farage has recorded more than 4,000 videos since March 2021, most recently just before entering the I'm a Celebrity jungle for ITV, grossing around £300,000 and paying him around £225,000 after Cameo's commission.
It was the second time Farage had accepted money from the person to record abusive messages aimed at the same NHS worker through the platform. An earlier message, sent in July 2021, in which Farage used the phrase “paper-thin snowflake” was removed from public view after a complaint.
Byline Times has seen emails in which Cameo confirms that it investigated Farage’s content on that occasion and acknowledged that the recipient – whose name along with the sender’s this newspaper is protecting – felt “harassed”. Cameo also made a private apology.
The recipient said: "In 2021 I, was working with young people… [who] were expressing racist views and I was talking to them via [Facebook] Messenger. I was trying to counter this. I gave up because I was getting nowhere and they paid Mr Farage to do a 30-second online video insulting me… I did email him asking him to steer them away from racism and he didn't reply.
"In December 2021, they paid for him to again insult me, this time saying how much he enjoyed insulting me and saying he hoped I got 'n*g dick for Christmas’. They meant black man’s penis.”
The man – who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and identifies as gay – added: “It was racist, homophobic and ableist. It was deeply offensive. Mr Farage does not know me. I was shocked to see him revelling in it. I could have been anyone. What if I had been 15 years old and struggling to come to terms with my sexuality? These words have real impact.”
He told Byline Times that he reported the matter to his local police station on Christmas Eve 2021.
"I did take it to the police who weren't interested but did say I could complain but would have to show how much he had caused the distress and alarm, which he didn't really, he just annoyed me,” he added.
The complainant followed up with three unanswered emails sent to an official address at nfarage.com telling the former MEP of his concerns about the people paying for the personalised message and their motives.
One email read: “Hi Nigel. You recently took £75 to do this video. I think you should have some context. I started talking to [the sender] because I was concerned [they were] at danger of becoming radicalised to the point of criminality. I stopped talking to them because of their refusal to stop using discriminatory language (including derogatory descriptions of young children based on skin colour). They repeatedly say that black people are genetically inferior and criminal. The solutions they propose include enforced deportation of Britons, incarceration and sterilisation based on skin colour towards and ethno-state.”
The recipient added: “I learned afterward that Farage queried the intended meaning of 'n*g dick’ with the customer before he sent it off. I don’t know what he was told but he is a smart enough person to know exactly how people would receive it.”
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This is not Farage’s first brush with direct-message controversy.
In October 2021, the former UKIP Leader shouted out “up the ‘RA” – a reference to the Irish Republican Army – in a different birthday greeting video on Cameo.
At the time, Farage said he always rejected unsuitable messages – which are written by the person paying – but said that this one had managed to “slip through the net”. His press officer claimed that the former Brexit Party Leader, who was a Member of the European Parliament for nearly 11 years, “probably didn’t know” the inflammatory meaning behind the phrase.
However, another former leader of UKIP, Alan Sked, said he heard Farage using the racial slur 'n*g-n*gs’ during their time co-founding the party. Although Farage has denied ever using the terms, he has been asked about them publicly since.
Sked, who quit the party in 1997 saying it had become racist, said Farage once told him: “There's no need to worry about the n****r vote. The n*g-n*gs will never vote for us."
Farage also addressed the issue in a 2014 interview with the LBC radio presenter James O’Brien.
Byline Times is publishing this article after Nigel Farage’s representatives took steps to publicise the allegations – suggesting they are part of a conspiracy to deny him a chance of winning the ITV reality show.
Having first instructed London law firm Carter Ruck to try and delay the story, in response to a request for comment, Farage’s team leaked its own version of events to the Daily Express newspaper.
The Express did not approach Byline Times for comment or any background information before publishing its own story – which claims, uncritically, that the Cameo message was a “set up” by “remain supporters to embarrass Nigel”.
It is not known whether Farage’s camp made the Express aware of the racist views held by the man who commissioned the Cameo video or that Farage had been emailed in clear terms about the man, his extreme beliefs, and that he saw Farage as a “leader”.
ITV is paying the former City stockbroker £1.5 million to appear in its primetime ITV series, and he is currently sitting as the fourth-favourite to be crowned ‘king of the jungle’.
Farage has calmly tackled the show’s Bushtucker trials, with viewers voting to watch him eat camel udder and crocodile teat as well as pizza topped with sheep penis, pig penis, and bull and crocodile penis – during which he even managed an unlikely ‘mmm’ for the cameras.
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He also got caught in a tense exchange with campmate Nella Rose, an influencer born in Belgium to Congolese parents before arriving in the UK in 2009, on the subject of immigration.
Farage claimed Britain's population had risen by 10 million since 2000, adding this was making it harder to get an NHS appointment or a 'filling' with a dentist. But as Rose said a lack of NHS funding was to blame, an exasperated Farage said: “Stop it. Stop. Nella, you're not listening to a single word I'm saying.”
Rose then asked Farage: “Let's get everything out in the open. Apparently you're anti-immigrants?” Farage asked: “Who told you that?” Rose said: “The internet.”
Farage replied: “Oh, well there we are then it must be true,” while Rose asked: “It must be! okay, but then why don't black people like you?”
Farage replied: “You'd be amazed, they do” – to which Rose reacted: “Nigel! Nigel!”
'Real Threat and Fear’
Farage has repeatedly denied being racist and has claimed that black people, in areas such as Catford in south London, stop him for selfies.
Farage also denied being anti-immigrant. He told campmate Rose: “No, no, all I've said is we cannot go on with the numbers coming to Britain that are coming.” To which Rose replied: “I'm one of the numbers.”
Farage remains active on Cameo and was posting out greetings as recently as 11 November.
His account – in which he describes himself with the words 'they call me Mr Brexit... some people say I am controversial, and I couldn’t care less’ – is “temporarily suspended” while he remains in the Australian jungle.
In one message from 3 October this year, Cameo user ‘Massimo’ thanked Farage for a quick two-hour turnaround on a message when the site says it could take up to seven days. Praising Farage for having also “embellished my script”, Massimo gave the politician a five-star rating.
Farage will return to his prime-time presenter role for GB News at a time of great uncertainty for a Conservative Party preparing for a likely period in opposition after the next general election.
Farage led UKIP from 2006 until 2009, and again from 2010 to 2016. He joined the party – which campaigned for the UK to leave the EU – in 1993 after leaving the Conservatives, and was elected to Brussels as an MEP in 1999.
As UKIP Leader, he campaigned claiming that European migrants were depriving British people of jobs. It made him popular among certain parts of the electorate, but while UKIP enjoyed European election and local council success, Farage was never able to replicate this in general elections, despite himself standing seven times for Parliament.
He stood down as UKIP Leader weeks after the 2016 EU Referendum, claiming that he had achieved his "political ambition" – and later formed the Brexit Party, now Reform UK, of which he remains honorary president.
Westminster sources have told Byline Times of the “real threat and fear” felt by centrist Conservatives should Farage win a by-election and force his way into the Conservative leadership, backed by media allies at GB News, a major investor in which is Sir Paul Marshall, the investment fund magnate.
“The more fuel Farage gets to maintain his profile, through GB News and shows like I’m a Celebrity, the more of a threat he is to the party if he gets a parliamentary seat in a by-election,” said one political source.
Labour MP Clive Lewis told Byline Times: “No one should be surprised at his use of racist language. This is, after all, the same individual that pleaded with Enoch Powell to [endorse] UKIP. The same individual that was described by one of his teachers as having 'publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views’. What’s actually more concerning is the fact ITV are now playing their part in normalising his voice.”
Byline Times asked Farage’s office for a comment.
His spokesperson told the Daily Express: “When Nigel first joined Cameo, there was a concerted effort by remain supporters to hijack the platform to embarrass Nigel by getting him to read out obscure rude words and in-jokes between friends.”
Claiming the scripted request had “slipped through the net”, the spokesperson added: “In the video, Nigel was asked by a customer on Cameo to read a message they had written for a friend. Had Nigel known that the message he was asked to read contained an obscure offensive word, he would not have made the video.”
Cameo did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Surrey Police could not confirm or deny the 24 December 2021 report.
The full version of the racial term was only used in the first line of this article to clarify to readers, for accuracy, what the term is.
Additional reporting by Adam Bienkov
A Crime to Promote Ideas that Offend Conservative Ministers? The Government’s Changing Definition of Extremism
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The Government has concocted a new definition of extremism as part of an upcoming plan for promoting “national cohesion”.
According to reports, it will treat as 'extremist' anyone who undermines the UK’s institutions and values.
Great concern has been expressed by human rights groups that this proposed change marks the latest, and most serious, effort by the Government to restrict the right to free speech enjoyed by its critics.
To understand the impending danger, it is important to compare the subtle differences in wording that distinguish this proposed definition from the version currently in use.
The Government’s counter-terror strategy, Prevent, defines extremism as “the active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.
While this definition too has received widespread criticism, the impending one appears to cast the net wider still, by asserting that: “Extremism is the promotion or advancement of any ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy, its institutions and values”.
The distinction between the two appears to centre on the term “active opposition” versus the “promotion or advancement of any ideology” that is seen as threatening to British institutions and values.
There is a difference between someone who is knowingly, actively, opposing Britain as a socio-political entity – and someone who is championing a cause they sincerely believe in, but who harbours no subversive intent.
What we are witnessing in the UK and the US is a weaponizing of the situation in Israel and Gaza to justify pre-existing right-wing or left-wing goals
Alexandra Hall Hall
The danger, of course, is that the latter individual, or protest movement, may nevertheless be ensnared by this new definition if the state deems their ideas to be risky to the established order of things. Indeed, the proposed definition seems to have little to do with measures to pre-empt terrorism and appears to be much more concerned with protecting the status quo from criticism.
Anyone claiming that this is a cynical reading of intentions should consider how this Government has treated its critics, particularly their right to freedom of speech and assembly.
Take, for example, the recently enacted Public Order Act, which equips the Government with new powers to restrict the right to peaceful protest, including what it calls “slow walking tactics”. Individuals may be subject to a “protest banning order”, which will then see them barred from enjoining others to protest for a given cause.
It was condemned by a roster of officials and organisations, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as Conservative peer Baroness Camilla Cavendish, who described it as “an affront to a civilised society.” JUSTICE, the law reform and human rights charity, argued that the Government’s thinking on this issue appears to be increasingly in harmony with that of authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia.
It is noteworthy that the Act was implemented following a wave of protests by environmentalist groups critical of the Government’s energy policies; and Black Lives Matter, which seeks to uproot what it frames as a systemic racism permeating Britain’s institutions.
But by reportedly rewriting the definition of extremism, this Government has its sights set on one group in particular: Muslim civil society.
Well-established outfits such as The Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Engagement and Development – the shared raison d’être of which is to represent British Muslim interests in the media and politics while combating the scourge of Islamophobia – are said to be 'captured' by the new definition.
The notion that the work done by these legitimate civil society groups risks toppling British institutions and dispelling British values is so absurd that it borders on parody.
Considering their well-established track records of campaigning for democratic participation among Muslims, which British institutions and values does this Government think these organisations are trying to overturn?
In the end, it is difficult to avoid the impression that these groups are regarded as anathema because they are critical of the Government’s methods to tackle violent extremism, particularly its Prevent strategy.
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Needless to say, this is not because they are opposed to fighting terrorism – but rather, it is because the evidence simply shows that Prevent is broken and significantly discriminates against Muslim communities. These concerns are shared by human rights giants such as Amnesty International (which recently authored a report on the topic) and the United Nations.
The Government is making this move at a time when it appears to have been caught off guard in recent weeks by hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to protest against Israel’s bombardment of the beleaguered Gaza Strip.
Senior officials have barely been able to contain their outrage towards ordinary people, particularly Muslims, for disagreeing with their policy toward Israel-Palestine.
The now former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, characterised the peaceful movement as “hate marches” and repeatedly called for them to be banned. The protests, which have included Jewish and LGBTQ+ groups, have been so alarming to Communities Secretary Michael Gove that he has reportedly requested £50 million in new funds to counter “radical ideologies” in Britain. A number of senior Conservatives demanded that a pro-Palestine march in London be forcefully prevented by the police because it coincided with Armistice Day, on 11 November – a position which was repudiated by the British Legion who instead defended the right to protest.
The Government’s proposed change to the definition of extremism risks tipping society into a kind of dystopian political space in which it is a crime to promote ideas that offend the sensibilities of senior Conservative ministers. Yet, there is also an irony to all of this.
A fundamental part of the Government’s own definition of British Values is “mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs” – which includes political beliefs. This all begs the question: if this Government is attempting to muzzle those whose beliefs and positions do not align with its own, is it not then guilty of extremism under its own definition?
Adeeb Ayton is a senior policy analyst with Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND)
Revealed: Almost Half of Maternity Wards Offering Substandard Care
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Almost half of all English maternity units are offering substandard care, making it one of the worst performing acute medical services in the NHS, Byline Times analysis has found.
The analysis, based on inspections of English hospitals by the Care Quality Commission, found that 85 of 172 inspected maternity services in England received ratings of ‘inadequate’ (18) or ‘requires improvement (67) at their latest inspection.
Some 65% of maternity wards were given subpar ratings for patient ‘safety’ one of several metrics looked at by the CQC.
The figures were a sharp rise on even the year before, and seem to reflect growing concerns over a crisis in NHS care.
The findings come after the health regulator began a focused inspection programme of maternity wards last year after the a government review into the Shropshire maternity scandal, which saw 300 babies left dead or brain damaged by shoddy care.
In one unit at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, there was a shortage of midwives, not all medicines practices were safe which “potentially placed women at risk of harm” and serious incidents were not being investigated. The report found a backlog of 215 patient safety incidents that had not yet been looked into, as of March this year.
The CQC was previously forced to look into the unit last year to the most recent report after "a high number of serious incidents associated with adverse outcomes for mothers and babies”.
A spokesperson for the hospital’s NHS Trust stressed that its patient safety backlog had now been largely addressed, and that the hospital had made major improvements since the inspection.
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Josiah Mortimer
In a statement at the time of the inspection its chief executive said they were “determined that this report will provide further momentum and impetus to address the issues identified and are working harder than ever to engage and involve our frontline colleagues in finding solutions to our challenges”.
Other hospitals had only eight per cent of staff who had done certain core training and a lack of facilities that had endangered patients or were losing as many as seven FTE staff a month leaving maternity centres unable to open.
Maria Caulfield, Minister for Women’s Health Strategy, told Byline Times that “maternity care is of the utmost importance to this Government” and stressed they have “invested £165 million a year since 2021 to grow the maternity workforce and improve neonatal services”.
“Every parent must be able to have confidence in the care they receive when giving birth, and we are working incredibly hard to improve maternity services, focusing on recruitment, training, and the retention of midwives," she added.
“But we know there is more to do. I welcome the Care Quality Commission’s commitment to monitor NHS trusts that are not providing adequate care to make sure improvements are made as quickly as possible.
“To do this, we have created a Maternity Safety Support Programme, dedicated to providing hands-on support to ensure trusts improve. It is already supporting 32 services, aiming to help trusts achieve a higher rating and provide a better and safer service.”
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CQC deputy chief executive Kate Terroni said that the regulator was yet to see “the progress needed” to address the safety defects in maternity care.
“Safe, high-quality maternity care for all is not an ambitious or unrealistic goal. It should be the minimum expectation for women and babies – and is what staff working in maternity services across the country want to provide,” she added.
“It's not acceptable that maternity safety is still so far from where it needs to be. As a healthcare system, we need to do better for women and for babies.”
Jeremy Hunt Used Autumn Statement to ‘Channel Funds to Marginal Conservative Seats’ Analysis Suggests
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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is targeting funds and investment at Conservative marginal seats, according to analysis of his Autumn Statement shared with Byline Times.
Ten of 12 MPs and seats mentioned by the Conservative chancellor in his major economic intervention last week had majorities smaller than the UK-average. And eight of the 12 had majorities of less than ten per cent.
Sarah Atherton, the MP for Wrexham, and Simon Baynes, the MP for Clwyd South, both of whose seats would be lost by the Conservatives at the next election based on current predictions, were given specific mention by the Chancellor, while other seats received bungs including Moray, represented by Douglas Ross MP (majority of 1%) and Bury North (James Daly MP) with a majority of just 0.22%.
The Chancellor said: “Having listened to my hon. Friends the Members for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) and for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes), I can announce a second investment zone in Wales in the fantastic region of Wrexham and Flintshire, which I will visit tomorrow.”
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The twelve MPs or seats referenced in the Chancellor’s speech with regard to a policy decision he had taken were:
- James Daly MP - Bury North: majority 105 (0.2%) - New ‘investment zone’ for his area
- Douglas Ross MP - Moray: majority 513 (1%) - Freezing alcohol duties
- Simon Baynes MP - Clwyd South: majority 1,239 (3.4%) - New ‘investment zone’ for his area
- Virginia Crosbie MP - Ynys Môn: majority 1,968 (5.4%) - Extending freeport/investment zone tax reliefs (benefiting her seat)
- Sarah Atherton MP - Wrexham: majority 2,131 (6.4%) - New ‘investment zone’ for her area
- Alun Cairns MP - Vale of Glamorgan: majority 3,562 (6.5%) - Freezing alcohol duties
- David Mundell MP - Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale: majority 3,781 (7.7%) - Freezing alcohol duties
- Matt Vickers MP - Stockton South: majority 5,260 (9.6%) - Extending the 75% business rates discount for retail, hospitality and leisure
- Simon Jupp MP - East Devon: majority 6,708 (10.5%) - as above
- Simon Fell MP - Barrow and Furness: majority 5,789 (12.6%) - as above
- Greg Smith MP - Buckingham: majority 20,411 (32.2%) - Freezing alcohol duties
- Ben Bradley MP - Mansfield: majority 16,306 (33.1%) - New ‘investment zone’ for his area
The average MP’s majority at the last general election was 24.9% or 12,527 votes, while seats with a majority of under 7,000 votes represented just 14.15% of the country as a whole, according to House of Commons data.
Yet of the twelve MPs identified by name by the Chancellor as beneficiaries of his policy decisions, only two represent constituencies that are more safe than the average seat at the 2019 election, analysis by pro-PR campaign Make Votes Matter reveals.
Eight of the remaining ten MPs would lose their seats at the next election based on current polling.
Campaigners point to the Chancellor's targeted generosity as a symbol of the pork-barrel politics with which First Past the Post is associated.
Last year, the New Statesman found that each Conservative MP constituent received an average of £64 more from four major ‘levelling up’ funds than those represented by another party.
Analysis in 2020 by the Guardian showed that opposition Labour councils have borne the brunt of local government cuts over the past decade. And research in 2019 by the BBC found that Conservative-held constituencies were overwhelming beneficiaries of the government’s increase in schools funding. The BBC’s Newsnight also found that Labour-Tory marginal seats were overrepresented when it comes to the government’s promises of money for “left-behind” towns.
In 2019, it emerged that money from the government’s £3.6bn Towns Fund was being spent in richer areas where Conservative MPs were fighting to keep their seats, at the expense of some of the UK’s poorest towns. Out of 61 areas picked by government ministers for the new Towns Fund, 60 were in Conservative-held seats or Tory targets with an average majority of just 3,000, according to The Times. Byline Times found similar bias.
For electoral reform backers, the figures show that Westminster’s winner-takes-all voting system causes politicians to prioritise leafy swing seats over super-safe constituencies - which are disproportionately Labour held and in urban areas.
Make Votes Matter's Chief Executive, Klina Jordan, commented: "With levelling-up funding and now with this Autumn Statement, the government is playing politics with people's lives.
"By any other name, this is surely an attempt by the government to shore up its vote in areas it just so happens to be more electorally vulnerable.
"As long as we're stuck with the current voting system, politicians of all stripes will keep doing this. That's why we need a simpler, proportional voting system where the opinions of voters in Manchester Gorton matters just as much as those in Moray."
Make Votes Matter is a single-issue campaign for Proportional Representation in the House of Commons. The Treasury was contacted for comment.
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‘I’m A Non-Entity Get Me Out Of Here’
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In recent decades the once very separate fields of politics and entertainment have fused into something dubbed ‘politainment’ that has made it near impossible to divine where one begins and the other ends. And nowhere has this trend been more in evidence than on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
Across 22 years the show has had a record of fielding ghastly, blood sucking creepy-crawlies against innocent parasites and the former has included Veritas founder Robert Kilroy-Silk, the Lib Dem’s Lembit ‘Cheeky’ Opik, latter day Dr Frankenstein Stanley Johnson, egg-botherer Edwina Currie, peerage-hopeful Nadine Dorries and Matt ‘hands’ Hancock.
Jungle politainment appeals to TV producers and politicians alike. Watching a member of parliament getting slimed plays to the basest instincts of the public and thus makes good TV. For the contestant, there is both the lure of the fee and the hope that such primetime appearances will raise their profile. Some – most notably Matt Hancock – are also engaging in a latter-day act of performative penitence that they hope will wipe the political slate clean.
This season Nigel Farage has added his talents to the fray and after a lifetime of spouting bollocks the former UKIP leader has pitched up in the jungle to ingest them instead. Man of the people Farage is being paid £1.5 million to appear – the largest fee in the show’s history.
Loathe him or detest him, Farage is one of Britain’s best known political players and one of its most divisive. His very appearance was likely calculated to stir controversy, grab headlines and spawn amusing interactions at the work water cooler. To that end, the producers have afforded him a lot of screen time and over the last week viewers have been subjected to Nigel Farage bathing naked (twice), eating a pizza covered in cows udders and telling the ‘bush telegraph’ that he would ‘never say never’ to being Prime Minister, much as I haven’t ruled out one day playing test match cricket on the Moon.
His very presence has led some Remainers to call for a boycott and while it is impossible to judge how effective that has been, figures appear to be down on last year. On opening night, GB News’ man on the ground the Ben Leo, having mistakenly read last year’s press release – reported the exact opposite – generating much hilarity. But having been obliged to watch hours of the show while researching this piece, I can report that laughs have been thinner on the ground than a jungle celebrity.
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Max Colbert and Josiah Mortimer
There has been trauma too. Witnessing Nigel Farage’s naked torso once might be considered a misfortune, viewing it twice left me scrambling for the telephone number at the Hague. And as I’ve watched him, and the other contestants go through mind-numbing hours of repetitive tasks, challenges and pots boiling on a fire, I’ve come to conclude that those boycotting Remainers have nothing to worry about. Indeed, the only people who should be worried are the producers and their star signing – Nigel Farage.
I’m not one of those who thinks that ‘Farage doesn’t matter’ or that we should ‘simply ignore him’. As a great political thinker, the former UKIP leader might rank as a minnow in a land of Lilliputians but his simple, dangerous, brand of ‘common sense’ populist politics cuts through, with the result that we are all now living in a Faragist Brexit Dystopia. Hate him all you like, but he has a ‘common touch’ and one which has unleashed dangerous, downright stupid, ideas into the mainstream.
Farage has got a well-practiced act. He knows how to play a crowd, when to deploy that disarming cigarette infused laugh and his well-worn catchphrase ‘wouldn’t you agree’ that makes it almost impossible for anyone talking to him not to.
So, whether standing before a home crowd of Brexiters, or sharing a pint with Jacob Rees-Mogg on GB News – it works. He comes across effectively and for some – even impressively. But put him in the jungle, away from that context, alongside Jamie Lynn Spears, or the charismatic Italian jockey Frankie Dettori, or the enigmatic YouTube sensation Nella Rose and the whole act not only falls flat – but apart.
In the promo for the show Farage told the cameras: “I’ve dealt with snakes in the European parliament, I think I can deal with this too...(and) in the jungle you’re going to find the real me.”
And sure enough, we have. But behind the curtain there is no mighty Wizard of Brexit but rather a meek, middle-aged man who worries about the shape of his bottom. He might get away with that if he had something else to bring but the architect of Brexit can’t even list any proper Brexit benefits. On Sunday night’s show, Nigel was challenged by French-born maître d'hôtel Fred Siriex to ‘list three’ and his answer, which included ‘self-government’, ‘taking back control of our territorial waters’ and the ‘nuclear submarine deal with the Australians’ was thinner gruel than even that on offer on the campsite stove.
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Farage has few interests beyond fishing, pointing at the English Channel and a very narrow knowledge of military history – and unlike many of his fellow contestants, he lacks an interesting backstory and comes across as anything but charismatic. Tellingly, come Sunday the public was no longer voting for him to do tasks – not because they had warmed to him but rather, I suspect, because he brings nothing to them.
In short, I’m A Celebrity… has revealed Farage to be the worst of all things – boring – and ‘boring’ does not make good TV. He might well make it to the end, but in retrospect I suspect that both he and ITV will come to rue the day he ever agreed to appear.
Could Isaac Levido Return the Conservatives to Power Again Against All the Odds?
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As the General Election exit poll was announced just after 10 pm on the evening of 12 December 2019, indicating a crushing defeat for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, staffers at Conservative campaign headquarters in Westminster began chanting a name to the tune of The White Stripes’ anthem ‘Seven Nation Army’: “Oh, Isaac Levido…”
It was not just a taunt at Corbyn, whose name had similarly been chanted to that tune by crowds of adoring supporters, but the Conservative Party election team was in no doubt that it was Levido’s work as its campaign director that had delivered Boris Johnson’s landslide.
Four years later, the party is once again putting its faith in the 39-year-old Australian wunderkind now often referred to as “the Wizard of Oz”.
So who is Isaac Levido and what is his strategy to return the Conservatives to power against all the odds?
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Max Colbert
The Protégé
For a man with such a formidable reputation, Levido keeps a low profile and grants few interviews. Those he does give tend to offer the same barebones story about his career. And since his reputation, both as a political strategist and a corporate lobbyist, is built largely around his mastery of the ‘dark arts’, his preference for the shadows could be seen as very much on-brand.
Levido does, however, cultivate a fierce sense of personal loyalty among those who work for him. After the 2019 election victory, he presented gifts to every member of his core campaign team, including a pair of cufflinks engraved with the number of additional Conservative seats they had helped to win.
Levido grew up in Port Macquarie in New South Wales, a town founded as a brutal penal colony for convicts but now a quiet coastal resort favoured by retirees from Sydney and younger professionals escaping from the big city some four hours’ drive south.
The son of a lawyer and local councillor for the Australian Liberal Party (which is much more right-wing than its name might suggest), Levido gained his first taste of campaigning in the US, where he completed a master’s degree in American government at Georgetown University.
While in Washington, he cut his teeth on Republican senatorial campaigns before landing a junior post at Australia’s Washington embassy.
His career took a decisive turn in 2013, when he approached the notorious Australian lobbyist and political fixer Lynton Crosby – the original “Wizard of Oz” – to ask for a job. Crosby liked what he saw and gave him one, at the Washington office of his lobbying outfit CTF Partners (“CTF” is from the partners’ names: Lynton Crosby, Mark Textor and Mark Fullbrook).
Little is known about who or what Levido was lobbying for in Washington, but CTF appears to have been none too fussy about its clients, provided they paid well, and the firm worked extensively for both Big Tobacco and major fossil fuel and mining interests.
In 2019, Crosby’s successor company, the C|T Group (for which Levido also worked), was revealed to have mounted a major ‘astroturfing’ operation for the multinational mining company Glencore, aimed at undermining the transition to renewable energy and influencing politicians to favour continued large-scale coal mining (unethical as this was, astroturfing is not in itself illegal) .
By the time Levido joined CTF, Crosby was already close to the British Conservative Party, having managed Michael Howard’s unsuccessful general election campaign in 2005, and then helped David Cameron to power in 2010.
He was particularly close to Boris Johnson, whose successful campaigns as Mayor of London he had directed in 2008 and 2012.
For Crosby, the line between politics and corporate lobbying has always been blurred to the point of invisibility, and his high-level political access has no doubt been a big selling point for his corporate clients.
When it comes to combining politics with the pursuit of personal profit, Isaac Levido has clearly learned a great deal from his mentor.
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How Two Right-Wing Meme Merchants Scored a £3 Million Government Coronavirus Contract
Sam Bright tracks the rise of Topham Guerin, the New Zealand ‘propaganda pair’ in charge of the UK Government’s online Coronavirus communications
Sam Bright
The 2019 General Election Campaign
In 2013, after Cameron’s Government dropped a plan to remove branding from cigarette packets, it emerged that CTF was working for Philip Morris International, the world’s largest tobacco company.
Former Liberal Democrat Health Minister Paul Burstow said: “Lynton Crosby cannot remain at the heart of government while he is also serving the interests of the tobacco industry. If he does not go, the Prime Minister should sack him.”
Crosby furiously rebutted “any claim that I have sought to improperly use my position as part-time campaign advisor to the Conservative Party”. It later emerged that he had lobbied Conservative minister Lord Marland for Philip Morris, albeit just before taking up his political role with the party. CTF partners told the Guardian that there was “no conflict of interest” because he was not working for the Conservative Party at the time.
Further questions were raised over Crosby’s close relationship with Johnson when the lobbyist accompanied the London Mayor on a trip to the United Arab Emirates to meet ultra-wealthy Gulf business people, during which he funded a networking dinner and paid for Johnson to fly back to London mid-trip so that he could be at Margaret Thatcher's funeral.
Then Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston observedm of lobbying in general: "I think those lobbyists with roles at the heart of any party should have to reveal their major clients, and that includes Lynton Crosby."
None of this was likely to deter Johnson, who greatly valued Crosby’s political services – not least his ability to use ‘dead cat’ techniques to distract voters from issues that might not play well.
That the relationship was mutually beneficial was illustrated in 2019, when CTF Partners donated more than £20,000 towards Johnson’s campaign for the Conservative leadership.
But it was Levido, rather than Crosby, who stepped into the lead campaign role for Johnson in the subsequent general election, at the invitation of Vote Leave campaign director Dominic Cummings. By this time, Levido had already worked alongside Crosby at Conservative Party HQ on the 2015 General Election, as well on Theresa May’s 2017 campaign.
“I learned a huge, huge deal from him,” Levido told The Times in 2020. “I owe him a great amount. His outstanding success speaks for itself. You want to learn as much from them when they’re instructing you to do something as you do when you’re observing them undertake their role.”
The 2019 General Election campaign saw Levido deploy the full range of ‘attack, divide and distract’ techniques he had learned from Crosby, as well as some online tactics of the kind that had proved effective earlier in the year to help the Australian Liberal Party leader Scott Morrisson pull off a surprise election win.
These included setting up a misleading website under the domain name labourmanifesto.co.uk and paying Google to make it more likely that voters would find this rather than Labour’s actual manifesto; editing a video of then Shadow Foreign Secretary Keir Starmer to make it appear that he couldn’t answer a question on Brexit; and deceptively rebranding the Twitter account of the Conservative Party Press Office as a fact-checking site during a live TV debate between Johnson and Corbyn.
These digital stunts were delivered by Topham Guerin, a firm run by two young New Zealanders with whom Levido and Crosby had worked in Australia and New Zealand.
But the main thrust of the social media ‘battle of the thumbs’ was to put out a constant stream of so-called ‘boomer memes’, also produced by Topham Guerin, with two aims: to hammer home Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” slogan and to denigrate Jeremy Corbyn.
The independent fact-checking service Full Fact found that 88% of the Facebook ads posted by the Conservative campaign in the first four days of December 2019 were misleading. Interviewed in 2019, Levido said he was “quite proud” of the digital campaign, which he described as “disruptive” and “edgy”.
An anonymous source who worked alongside Levido on Scott Morrison’s campaign told the Sydney Morning Herald how the same constant flow of crude memes had worked for that: “We’d make them really basic and deliberately lame because they’d get shares and lift our reach; that made our reach for the harder political messages higher.”
Reform or Ruin: Could Labour Win the Next Election but Lose the Future?
AV Deggar considers the structural changes needed from Labour, if it knocks the Conservatives out of power at the next election
AV Deggar
Commercial Lobbying
Johnson’s landslide win, on top of Morrison’s unexpected victory earlier in the year, confirmed Levido’s reputation as an outstandingly effective political operative. It also earned him an OBE for political services in the Queen’s 2020 Birthday Honours List.
The next step for Levido was to capitalise on this reputation in the commercial sphere – much as his mentor Crosby had done so lucratively.
Just a month after Johnson entered Number 10, Levido set up his own commercial lobbying firm, Fleetwood Strategy Limited, together with Michael Brooks, another former Crosby protégé. Peter Dominiczak, a former political editor of The Telegraph was later brought on board as a director.
Fleetwood’s website lists several other former senior government advisors and Conservative Party operatives as staffers, including: Ben Jafari (former special advisor to the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary), Henry Cook (a former senior advisor for five different government departments and a speechwriter for Johnson), and Georgia Hardisty (former assistant to the Conservative Party campaign director). Fleetwood’s team also includes a former Labour Party and trade union operative, Melantha Chittenden – a sign, perhaps, that Levido is hedging his bets.
In March 2020, Levido was called on once again by Johnson and Cummings – this time to manage public communications around the Coronavirus pandemic.
Perhaps mindful of the conflict of interest accusations that had surrounded Crosby, Levido temporarily stepped down as a director of Fleetwood while he took up this position in Downing Street. But his role at the heart of government was surely useful in cementing relationships with key government decision-makers of the sort that can be helpful to corporate lobbyists.
By mid-2023, Fleetwood’s client list as disclosed to the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists was short but impressive, with its clients comprising: Airbnb, infrastructure group Balfour Beatty, crypto-currency platform Luno, and data analytics corporation Palantir, which had revenues of nearly €2 billion in 2022.
(Fleetwood is not registered with the Public Relations and Communications Association, which demands higher levels of transparency from its members and has called for reform of the current legal framework governing lobbying).
Balfour Beatty is a member of the ‘Build Back Better Council’ established by Johnson and a very considerable recipient of multi-million pound government contracts – most recently for the £1.3 billion A66 Northern Trans-Pennine upgrade project.
But it is Levido’s and Fleetwood’s relationship with Palantir – the data giant co-founded and still chaired by far-right US billionaire and Donald Trump campaign donor Peter Thiel – that has attracted most controversy. Accused by campaigners of involvement in multiple human rights abuses, Palantir (which has always denied such accusations) was last week awarded a £330 million contract to create a “federated data platform” for the NHS – a development the British Medical Association described as “deeply worrying”.
The services offered to clients by Fleetwood Strategy include “government engagement” – but the extent to which such engagement played a role in helping to land this deal is not known.
Palantir’s initial introduction to the lucrative world of UK Government contracts had come some time earlier, when the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers – the founder of another corporate consultancy, Newbridge Advisory – introduced Palantir’s CEO to a senior Cabinet Office official in 2019. The company went on to win a £27 million contract to process border and customs data post-Brexit – a contract that was not put out to tender.
‘Conservative Attempts to Fight a Climate Change ‘Culture War’ Betray Our Planet’
Conservative strategists are prioritising partisan games over the survival of the planet, writes Tom Burke
Tom Burke
Weaponising Fear
With Labour’s lead in the polls looking all but unassailable, Isaac Levido will find his electioneering skills tested to the full in the months ahead. But Scott Morrison’s 2019 victory in Australia also looked highly unlikely just a few months before it occurred. So what will Levido’s strategy be?
Some early indications came in the shape of Rishi Sunak’s rowing back on the UK’s climate commitments and Jeremy Hunt’s claim to be cutting taxes in his autumn statement. Fear of voters being hit in their pockets by government action to reduce emissions, and by higher taxes, will no doubt be part of the recipe.
It seems probable that it was Levido who weaponised anxiety over ultra-low emission zones (ULEZ) to narrowly win the Uxbridge by-election for the Conservatives in August, as Byline Times reported at the time. As an investigation by Valent Projects has detailed, a very large amount of money was spent on social media manipulation, including the creation of thousands of inauthentic accounts, to rile voters up about ULEZ ahead of this by-election, by persons unknown. It is highly likely that we will be seeing a lot more of such online manipulation in the run-up to the next general election.
Stirring fear and resentment of immigrants and asylum-seekers is also likely to be a major feature of the campaign, as it was for Lynton Crosby in his successful effort to get Australia’s Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard re-elected in 2001. In that election, Howard falsely claimed that Afghan refugees arriving in boats were throwing their babies overboard as a means to ensure that they were rescued and granted asylum, following up this lie with full-page ads proclaiming: “We will decide who comes into this country.”
All the signs are that this will be an exceptionally dirty campaign, perhaps made even more so by the fact Levido’s influence and access as a lobbyist, in the UK at least, depends in part on him having congenial associates in government.
But, as the careers of Lynton Crosby and his protégé illustrate, both corporate lobbying and political campaigning are now thoroughly transnational – and even when technically separated still deeply interconnected – businesses. Whatever the outcome of the UK election, Isaac Levido is unlikely to be short of clients willing to pay handsomely for his highly unusual skillset.