What was Keir Starmer’s original sin?

Was it winter fuel? The freebies ‘scandal’? His unambitious tax and spend plans? Peter Mandelson? Was it his dullness, his lack of charisma, his strange refusal to dream?

What if I told you that Starmer’s fate was sealed long before he ever set foot in Downing Street?

Before he crafted his manifesto, before he became Labour leader, perhaps even before he entered frontline politics. What if Starmer’s fatal flaw wasn’t his at all - but one he inherited, refused to confront, and eventually succumbed to?

Today marks 10 years since Britain voted to leave the European Union. Over this month, The Lead is commiserating, with a series of essays and features exploring the long fallout from that decision: its economic consequences, its cultural legacy and the ways it continues to shape our politics.

Later this week, I’ll be writing about how Brexit helped create the conditions for Reform UK’s rise, while our other contributors chart Brexit’s impact on universities, coastal towns and our economy.

But perhaps the most immediate reminder of Brexit’s enduring influence arrived yesterday, almost as if it had been planned. Brexit claimed its latest casualty; after months of pressure, Starmer is stepping down.

Let’s wind back a little, and remind ourselves: we’ve been here before.

‘Starmer refused to look Brexit in the eye.
That may prove to be his defining mistake’

David Cameron gambled his premiership on a referendum he never expected to lose. Theresa May spent three years trying and failing to reconcile the irreconcilable demands of Leave voters, her frothing backbenchers and economic reality.

Boris Johnson succeeded in “getting Brexit done” but struggled to govern the fractious country that emerged afterwards. Liz Truss inherited an economy with little room for error and attempted to grow her way out of Brexit-induced stagnation with catastrophic consequences.

And Rishi Sunak, much like Keir Starmer, struggled to convince a permanently angry electorate that a technocrat could grapple with the challenges of post-Brexit Britain. Now, for the first time, a Labour leader joins the list.

Of course, Starmer’s downfall was not caused solely by Brexit. His premiership was damaged by entirely predictable internal Labour rebellions and growing public frustration that the promise of change had not translated into anything meaningful.

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He seemed committed to governing as though he were permanently campaigning for the next election, pursuing a lost tribe of voters who barely existed in the first place while alienating much of his core support in the process. It was a masterclass in poor political management. Ultimately, he had to go.

Yet all of those problems existed within the political and economic landscape Brexit helped create.

Labour under Starmer did have achievements; some modest, some genuinely significant. The Employment Rights Bill and Renters’ Rights Bill immediately reduced insecurity for millions of workers and tenants. The government began the process of renationalising the railways. It introduced breakfast clubs for hungry children across the country. It eventually abolished the two-child benefit cap, lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty overnight.

The problem is that the political landscape in which these stories existed had been permanently altered by Brexit. The turmoil, anger and intrigue unleashed by the referendum fundamentally changed our politics; forever altering the media ecosystem, and our public expectations of politicians, and creating a political environment in which incremental progress struggles to cut through. Good news rarely survives the news cycle because, ultimately, editors want psychodrama.

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On the day the Health Secretary resigned, it was announced that NHS waiting lists fell by 110,000 in March — the biggest monthly drop outside of Covid since 2008. But this fact was barely acknowledged; it was the cutting words of Wes Streeting’s resignation letter that made the front pages.

The irony is, of course, that Starmer had the opportunity to break the cycle. He was the first prime minister not tied to a fundamentally pro-Brexit project and had spent years arguing against withdrawal.

He was surrounded by advisers and colleagues that knew about the huge elephant in the room: the economic self-harm, the diminished influence, the vulnerabilities Britain had imposed upon itself. Instead, Starmer chose to cosy up to an increasingly erratic US president after distancing ourselves from our closest European allies, and allowed his premiership to be haunted by small boats and immigration – issues that Brexit was supposed to solve but instead elevated to the centre of political life.

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Ultimately, Starmer refused to look Brexit in the eye. That may prove to be his defining mistake.

That is not to say every problem Britain has faced over the past decade stems from Brexit. The pandemic happened, Russia invaded Ukraine, all of this was set in the backdrop of thirteen years of austerity. Governments made mistakes entirely unrelated to leaving the EU.

But Brexit damaged Britain on two fronts. First, it left the UK economy around 6-8 per cent smaller than it would have been had we remained. Trade became more difficult, labour shortages emerged across key sectors, business investment lagged behind comparable economies, growth weakened and public finances suffered. Those consequences matter because politics ultimately depends on delivery. Governments survive when people feel their lives are improving. That is the defining story of our last decade.

But Brexit also changed our national psyche. It normalised a deep suspicion of elites, from Brussels to Westminster. It reinforced the idea that experts, institutions and politicians were conspiring against the public will. Immigration became not simply a policy issue but a symbol of unfairness, decline and grievance, and we became more isolated, more distrustful and more cynical at precisely the moment Britain needed confidence and cooperation.

The rise of Reform did not happen in a vacuum. It was built on the same frustrations, resentments and unfulfilled promises that powered Brexit itself. And Starmer too often chose to engage with Brexit’s assumptions rather than challenge them. He rarely confronted the architects of Brexit over their promises, their failures or the damage they had inflicted. Instead, he positioned his premiership in the framework they had created.

Starmer’s government made plenty of errors. But 10 years on from the referendum, it is worth asking whether any were quite as consequential as his refusal to confront the defining political event of his generation. ■

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About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead and a freelance political journalist and broadcaster.

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🇪🇺 This story is the next part in our series examining the impact voting to Leave the European Union had on the UK since June 2016. We’ve dug into the numbers around the economy, immigration and more since the EU Referendum and also heard how Brexit has left our universities in a bleak position. And this morning we welcomed Naomi Smith from Best For Britain as she argues why the time is now re-joining based on the public mood.

Next we’ll be exploring what life’s been like for EU migrants living here and how Brexit paved the way for Reform. Sign up now to make sure you receive it first.

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Plus take advantage of our special offer and get 30 per cent off an annual subscription (usually £49, use this link to get it for £34.30 instead) to help us write more in-depth original series like this, going deep into the issues affecting people, policy and place in the UK right now.

We all know the cursed ratio off by heart - 52:48, a tiny victory for the Leave campaign, and certainly no roaring mandate for the very hard version of Brexit we ended up with. Almost immediately after that vote back in 2016, Best for Britain was set up and began publishing its ‘Brexit Shift’ reports, using a then little known polling technique called MRP to track the shift in sentiment from anti to pro-EU membership on a constituency basis. We were surprised how quickly lots of seats that had voted leave, were flipping to Bregret.

A decade on, and the clamour is even louder. Support for rejoining is highest, unsurprisingly, among Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Green voters, above 80 per cent in each case. But almost two-fifths of Conservative voters and nearly a fifth of Reform voters also back it.

This is the majority position, held across the political spectrum, and it is growing. The government’s current reset strategy commands broad, but not deep, support: 61 per cent back it, but only 19 per cent feel strongly about it. A membership commitment would generate a movement and propel us in the right direction, and secure the much needed votes for progressives.

The Brexit debate is moving from a culture war to a conversation about realities and charting a path to the kind of country we are ambitious to see realised.

The referendum result was a howl of frustration from communities that had watched their high streets hollow out, wages which fell behind the cost of living and a sense of being ignored by those in Westminster. Being tough on the causes of the vote matters enormously, because it is key to understanding why the conversation has changed and why it can change further still.

The evidence has accumulated to a point where it is simply very hard to overlook. The Bank of England estimates that Brexit has reduced UK GDP by 6 per cent. NBER calculates that business investment has reduced by 12-18 per cent due to leaving the EU. Haulage firms in the UK have been going bust at twice the rate than the five years prior to Brexit. I could go on. I won’t, but what we have is nearly a decade of data and economic loss that has compounded the background of every budget, every NHS waitlist, every unaffordable home, and commensurate polling to show voters would now opt to go back in.

What changed? Views on Brexit are shifting because they are now being formed by lived experience rather than identity or anger. People cannot see their GP any more easily than they could ten years ago. Their weekly shop costs more. Jobs have been lost. And tensions stoked as problems then wrongly blamed on Brussels are now being falsely pinpointed on immigration.

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Our latest research has found that reinstating our membership of the EU, our largest trading partner, could generate £92bn in GDP; creating the economic boost we desperately need to fund social services, infrastructure and growth. As we look towards the next ten years, and ask where we want this country to be, the numbers are pointing us in one direction only.

The current government’s instinct has been to dip a toe in the proverbial EU membership pool: a youth mobility scheme here, sector-by-sector agreements there. Partial arrangements deliver partial benefits. They require lengthy negotiations, unavoidable trade-offs, and they do not resolve the underlying challenges that people are facing every day.

The significant economic shift needed to positively impact people’s lives will not come from concluding another incremental agreement, but from signalling a credible intent to pursue membership. That signal alone would begin to change investment decisions, business confidence, and Britain’s standing in a world where our most important friends and neighbours happen to be in the European Union. This would make a real difference in our lives.

Anniversaries often inspire reflection on the past. The question for this anniversary is whether Britain is finally ready to have the honest conversation about where that course has led and where we plan to go. The public, it turns out, is ready. They have been for some time. ■

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About the author: Naomi Smith is the chief executive of Best For Britain, a group of researchers, data scientists, strategists, and activists, fixing the problems Britain faces after Brexit

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🇪🇺 This story is the next part in our series examining the impact voting to Leave the European Union had on the UK since June 2016. We’ve dug into the numbers around the economy, immigration and more since the EU Referendum and also heard how Brexit has left our universities in a bleak position. Next we’ll be exploring what life’s been like for EU migrants living here and how Brexit paved the way for Reform. Sign up now to make sure you receive it first.

Plus take advantage of our special offer and get 30 per cent off an annual subscription (usually £49, use this link to get it for £34.30 instead) to help us write more in-depth original series like this, going deep into the issues affecting people, policy and place in the UK right now.

Let’s start with the good news.

People still believe politics can deliver change, they are still willing to vote Labour, and Andy Burnham has just proved it.

The bad news? Keir Starmer proved exactly the same thing less than two years ago.

There are undoubtedly things to be pleased about.

With 55 per cent of the vote and a majority of more than 9,000 over Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon, Burnham smashed through his electoral test, and increased Labour’s majority.

A by-election talked about as a referendum on Labour’s future ended up delivering Labour one of its most emphatic victories in recent memory. The collective breath held by Labour organisers, activists and MPs over the past few weeks was finally exhaled.

For months now, British politics has really been a story of collapse and rebuild. By most accounts, Labour is dead and Reform UK is unstoppable.

Makerfield suggests reality is more complicated. Most obviously (and once again) Reform lost. Reform have now suffered three by-election defeats across England and Wales in the past nine months, despite being presented as some kind of unstoppable political force.

Robert Kenyon, whose campaign would have collapsed instantly if he’d been standing for a party with even a modicum of self-respect, failed to persuade the people of Makerfield that what they really wanted was an MP with a long trail of misogynistic tweets and no apology.

He joins a growing list of unsuccessful Reform hopefuls, including GB News presenter and former academic Matt Goodwin and former UKIP-turned-Tory-turned Reform “political chancer” Llyr Powell. Meanwhile some of the party’s actual success stories include a man who was jailed for repeatedly kicking his girlfriend and a woman who this week suggested England’s football team should “keep winning” to reduce domestic abuse rates. It’s quite the club. Imagine how badly you have to campaign not to get into it.

The other notable casualty was Restore Britain. Another charming chap made in Reform, Rupert Lowe’s insurgent, hard-right outfit attracted attention, headlines and online enthusiasm, but when voters were asked to make a choice, they secured only a few thousand votes and seven per cent of the vote.

So for all the noise surrounding Britain’s populist right, voters in Makerfield still opted for a Labour candidate promising competence, local roots and practical change.

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Perhaps beneath the commentary sits a less inflammatory and more comforting truth. Voters have not given up on democratic politics altogether, nor have they concluded that the entire system is beyond redemption. They are still willing to give mainstream politicians a chance, albeit, with something different from what they have been getting.

Burnham’s appeal rests in his ability to appear rooted in a place outside of London. Burnhamism is something like regional delivery, local identity and a sense that politics should improve people’s lives rather than simply manage decline. His model of politics already feels more tangible than much of what voters have experienced in recent years.

The problem is what — if anything — he can actually do with that.

So here’s the bad news.

While Burnham has shown that Labour can still win elections, he has not yet answered the much harder question of what the party can do next. In that sense, he’s at the very same start line as Starmer.

Westminster is already consumed by speculation about the prime minister’s future. Burnham’s supporters see this result as a whopping mandate for change, and critics are openly discussing leadership contests. Starmer, however, has other ideas. He has already confirmed that he would stand in any possible leadership election, and has made it clear he won’t go without a fight.

Much of the country does not share Westminster’s enthusiasm for more political drama. Part of the issue is that Britain has spent too much of the last decade trapped in a churn; prime ministers promising renewal and departing before their projects reach completion. Every government sits in campaign mode, expending all their energy on changing course, shifting priorities and moving around their best players, rather than governing. Five-year parliamentary terms are barely long enough to tackle Britain’s long-term problems.

If Labour responds to every setback by changing leader, it risks looking dangerously self-indulgent at precisely the moment the public wants stability and delivery. And if things descend into acrimony — briefing wars and the party eating itself alive — things start to look very self-indulgent indeed.

Even if Burnham does manage some dignified entrance to No.10, things don’t get easier.

The Reform threat may have been diminished in Makerfield, but it has not vanished. More than 15,000 people still voted for Reform. Thousands more backed Restore Britain. That is a substantial bloc of voters who remain angry and alienated. To dismiss them outright would be foolish. The grievances that fuel those movements are still there, as are the constraints facing any future prime minister.

Economic growth remains sluggish. Public services remain under intense pressure. Our defence capabilities are weak; welfare reform remains politically toxic. The population is ageing, sick and unhappy. The fiscal room for manoeuvre is limited.

Burnham’s supporters often speak as though replacing the Prime Minister would automatically unlock a more popular and successful Labour government. It’s true that some of Starmer’s problems are, regrettably, personal. But his biggest problems are institutional, economic and political, and whoever occupies No. 10 will face the same Treasury orthodoxy, the same bond markets and the same frustrations. But this time, they’ll have less than three years to convince the public to give them another five.

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Burnham may well prove a more effective communicator and reconnect Labour with voters who feel abandoned. He may also offer a clearer sense of purpose and optimism. But as we already know: winning an election and governing a country are two very different challenges.

Makerfield is therefore a cause for neither triumph nor despair. Not good, nor bad, but something in between. Labour is not dead, Reform not inevitable and British politics is not mutating into some unrecognisable populist dystopia. But voters are not happy. They still want more.

So what can we conclude? Labour has been here before, buoyed by goodwill and a hunger for change that has not yet been fully met.

The real test is what happens next: whether belief is rewarded or squandered once again. The greatest risk isn’t that hope runs out, but that it is repeatedly revived and then destroyed.

If Burnham’s Labour cannot turn a mandate into something consequential, then his victory could very well deepen the frustration it was supposed to resolve. ■

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About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead and a freelance political journalist and broadcaster.

👫Agree with Zoë? Share this story with your friends, family and colleagues to help us reach more people with our independent journalism, always with a focus on people, policy and place.

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🇪🇺 We’ll be back in your inbox next week as we mark a decade since the UK voted to leave the European Union and the process of Brexit began. You can see part one and two in our series looking in detail at how it’s affected Britain since that day in June 2016.

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The death of a 13-month-old boy in Lancashire is shocking. The lies and manipulation that took place to try and hide the abuse are more shocking still.

Preston Davey, who was in the process of being adopted, was killed and abused by those who claimed to love him and wanted to care for him.

In the wake of Baby P in 2007, wide-ranging changes were made following a serious case review. We must see the same in Preston’s memory.

A vigil held in Lancashire this week, on what would have been little Preston’s fourth birthday, drew people from across the North West to pay their respects. People are rightly outraged by what took place to a poor, defenceless, baby, and the public will expect action and answers to ensure this kind of abuse doesn’t happen again.

Harrowing statements from Preston’s foster parents, who he had left four months before his adoption, as well as from the toddler’s birth mother and father were read in court ahead of the sentencing.

Paul Cooper, who fostered Preston from when he was just a few days old up to 10 months, said: “Even to this day I tell myself this is not real or possible, then reality hits and it breaks me again to think about the suffering Preston went through.

“I never thought I was an emotional person, however, these past three years I haven’t gone through a week without crying, sometimes it might not be anything to do with Preston or this case however, I just become upset over little things.”

Davey’s killers were sentenced today at Preston Crown Court. Jamie Varley, 37, has been given a whole life order for the murder and sexual abuse of Preston Davey. He will never be released from prison.

His co-accused John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for allowing the death of a child.

An inquiry will be held and involves councils, hospitals, police, adoption agencies, employers and more. Each will have to go over in detail and reflect on the simple question - could they have prevented this? What questions were not asked at the time to reveal the pattern of evil misleading that was ongoing?

One of the organisations to face additional scrutiny is Blackpool Victoria Hospital, as our sister title The Blackpool Lead reported in March has been facing questions about safety and the culture within the hospital in recent years particularly following the death of baby Olivia-Rose who died at home aged just 17 days old in October last year.

Preston Davey was admitted on 25 May, 30 June and 6 July 2023. He died on 27 July.

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel De Souza told the BBC this morning: “We know that very early into his adoption, and he was only in adoption with his family for four months, very early, he was taken to hospital with bruises.

“The consultant dismissed it. Did they dismiss it because it was a teacher adopter? Did that evil abuser hoodwink people under that professional guise?”

She was speaking ahead of the sentencing of Varley, who was part of the safeguarding team at the high school in Blackpool where he worked.

While Blackpool Council was not overseeing the adoption - as Davey had been in care in Oldham and his adoption was being managed by agency Adoption Now, which works across Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and Tameside - it puts the safety of children and vulnerable young people in Blackpool and the North West back into focus too and questions whether those organisations which should be raising issues are doing so. And if they do, where do those issues go to be acted on?

The children’s commissioner said: “The social worker saw him 20 days before he died, I want to know whether the correct level of professional curiosity was there.

“I have huge numbers of questions, and I’m not going to let go until I have the answers. I’ve been waiting for this Child Protection Authority to be set up. There’s been a consultation, it’s gone too slow.”

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Our full report below published this week in The Blackpool Lead outlines what the inquiry will cover, and especially what it will mean for Blackpool Victoria Hospital. Please be warned, this is difficult reading, but it is important Preston’s story is heard.

Blackpool Victoria Hospital’s care of Preston Davey to be investigated after ‘pure evil’ murder

An inquiry into the short life of Preston Davey, who was sexually abused by his new adoptive fathers before being murdered by one of them, will look into his three admissions to Blackpool Victoria Hospital in the run up to his death.

The baby boy was treated at the Vic, in Whinney Heys Road, three times in the four months before his death in 2023, and was later found to have suffered around 40 deliberate injuries, including to his mouth, throat and bottom.

The child protection review can get under way now that South Shore Academy textiles teacher Jamie Varley, 37, and his ex-public schoolboy and financial sales manager boyfriend John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, both then of Staining Road in Staining and later of Chandlers Way, Grimsargh, have been convicted.

The pair’s trial heard some of the details - but now the review, which was suspended while court proceedings were ongoing, will officially examine every area of Preston’s life, from his birth in prison on June 16 2022 and placement in foster care at five days old, to his adoption by Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley on April 1 2023 and subsequent treatment by the NHS in Blackpool and social services in Oldham.

It will delve into the facts and aim to provide answers to some tough questions relating to the 13-month-old’s life and death.

An element of the review is expected to specifically look at whether any chances were missed during the care of Preston before his death.

Varley denied murder, manslaughter, and multiple child sex offences, including making indecent images of Preston, who he had renamed Elijah, and abusing him.

After an eight-week trial, he was found guilty of murder, two counts of assault by penetration, five counts of cruelty to a child, grievous bodily harm, sexual assault of a child, 13 counts of taking indecent photos or videos of a child, one of distributing an indecent photo of a child, to his co-accused, and one of making an indecent photo.

McGowan-Fazakerley denied allowing the death of a child, two counts of child cruelty and sexual assault of a child. He was found guilty.

The couple’s trial, which exposed one of Britain’s worst child abuse cases and sickened the nation, was told about Preston’s hospital visits before his murder.

The first, on May 25, saw Varley rush into A&E with the boy at about 11.10am, telling paediatric sister Zoe Hellowell: “He’s not breathing.”

Hellowell said Preston was breathing, albeit ineffectively, but unresponsive and floppy. He also had bruises on either side of his forehead.

Nurse Holly Edwards raised the alarm and police were contacted, with a medical report describing the injuries as “unexplained” and “inconsistent with a version of events given…”

At the time, Preston was diagnosed with a chest infection and recovered within four hours, though an expert witness for the prosecution threw the diagnosis into doubt - suggesting another cause for the boy’s symptoms.

In a statement read before the jury, Dr Mark Rosenthal, consultant respiratory paediatrician, said the condition Preston was in on the day of his hospital visit pointed towards a “non-accidental hypoxic event”, with causes including suffocation, aspiration or bleeding into the lungs.

He said Preston’s history of arriving at the hospital very unwell, confused and acidotic - when there is too much acid in the blood - along with having a seizure and then recovering could never be down to an infection. No police action followed.

A second hospital visit happened the next month, on June 30, when Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley reported Preston had a rash, diarrhoea, vomiting and a fever.

Medics noted bruising to the boy’s head but staff were shown a video of the child pulling a toy box on to himself while playing.

“You lot are going to think we have been abusing him or something,” Varley said.

The video had been filmed 12 days prior, it was later discovered, and so unlikely to be relevant.

Preston arrived at the hospital for a third time in July after breaking his elbow.

Varley told medics he was lowering Preston into his cot when the baby jumped or kicked his feet and he heard a pop or click in his arm, the court was told.

But orthopaedic surgeon Dr Alberto Elbo, who treated Preston at the fracture clinic the next week, said he was told by Varley the injury was caused as the child was being strapped into a car seat.

“That’s what dad told me,” he told the court. “What I understood from that day was he was being strapped in his car seat.”

And Varley’s co-worker Janet Gee said Varley gave her a different explanation, telling the trial: “The inconsistency was around the cot; the first instance was he dropped him, the second was he had his arm out of the cot and hurt it.

“So, no consistency.”

The hospital had “absolutely no concerns”, Preston’s social worker told Varley in a text message.

And an independent reviewer from Oldham social services wrote in a report after visiting the family at home, apparently addressing Preston: “You were happy there with both your daddies.

“And this made me ponder a little as to whether there was a problem that I couldn’t see.

“I decided there wasn’t an issue…”

The court was told Varley had taken a sabbatical from South Shore Academy, where he was also a head of year and a designated safeguarding lead, to look after Preston, who was adopted through Oldham Council, but struggled as a new parent.

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One neighbour thought: “Why is the baby crying so much?” and heard raised voices, though she described the defendants as an “ordinary, friendly couple”.

There is a feeling locally that those who saw Preston in the run-up to his demise may have fallen foul of so-called ‘positive bias’ - refusing to believe his new fathers were capable of such malevolence, according to one source briefed on the case.

But over the four months under his adoptive parents’ care, Preston was routinely ill-treated, had indecent images and videos taken of him, was sexually abused and physically assaulted.

After a lifeless Preston was taken to the Vic on July 27 2023, Varley told police the baby had accidentally drowned in a bath after being left for two or three minutes.

But Preston had arrived at hospital dry and with a nappy on and had no water in his lungs.

Tests on his body uncovered multiple non-accidental internal and external injuries, including bruises and grazes to his head, face and mouth, upper limbs, chest, back and left thigh, as well as injuries to his mouth, throat and bottom.

There was nothing to suggest drowning, the court was told, with a pathologist saying the boy died because he was smothered or choked on something inserted into his mouth.

The suspicion is that Preston choked while being assaulted.

Dr Joanne Gifford, an expert in child sexual abuse, said she discovered 40 injuries on Preston, internally and externally, including tears and lacerations.

“The injuries are clinical signs of sexual abuse,” she said. “More than one occasion.”

The jury had to look at videos and photographs of Preston’s bruises - both before and after his murder - along with images of his anatomy, parts of which were branded “abnormal” and caused by “forcible penetration” by a Home Office pathologist.

There was also a bite mark on his bottom, the court was told.

There were claims in court that the injuries, including bruising at the back of Preston’s throat, may have been caused by medics’ frantic efforts to save his life.

But pathologist Dr Alison Armour dismissed the idea, insisting: “Anaesthetists are trained not to put the tube in the pharynx. It will kill the patient.”

She also said such bruising only happens in life, when blood is being pumped around the body by the heart, and that Preston’s circulation during resuscitation efforts would not have been strong enough to cause bruising.

The jurors also saw through the defendants’ lies and took about 14 hours to deliver their verdicts.

As he learned his fate on Monday, Varley stood in the dock and put his hands to his face in shock. He then fell to his knees, retched and threw up. McGowan-Fazakerley was emotionless.

With Preston’s abusers now jailed, the question that can now be officially asked is this: how, with so many people involved in his ill-fated life on the Fylde coast, from Vic medics to police and social workers, was no one capable of rescuing him before it was too late?

The NHS trust running the Vic was asked a string of questions, both during the trial and following it.

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It did not answer them, with CEO Maggie Oldham instead saying in a statement: “The appalling murder of Preston Davey has shocked us all and our thoughts remain with Preston’s family and all the people affected by these terrible crimes.

“We are working closely with other agencies and are continuously improving our child safeguarding. We are committed to encouraging colleagues to speak up about anything they are not comfortable with or concerned about.

“We will now consider carefully all the evidence heard at the trial to identify if any further improvements are necessary, beyond the safeguards already in place.”

The hospital was unable to carry out a full inquiry into Preston’s treatment because of the police investigation and trial, but bosses are now expected to review evidence from court to see if any improvements can be made, it is understood.

DCI Andy Fallows from Lancashire Police’s Force Major Investigation Team said: “It is not often in this job that you encounter pure evil.

“Anybody who has followed this trial will no doubt understand why I place Jamie Varley and John McGowan-Fazakerley in that category.

“Almost from day one, they set about abusing Preston and making his short life a harrowing tale of misery and pain. It was this abuse that ultimately led to Preston’s death.

“For the first nine months of his life Preston was a happy and healthy child - but by the end he was a broken shell.

“This was due to the sordid and wicked acts of Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley.”

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The UK government says it is about to draw “a line in the sand” over children’s use of social media.

Announcing plans for what ministers are calling an “Australia-plus” model, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to ban under-16s from using major social media platforms, arguing that tech companies have failed to protect children from harmful content, addictive design features and contact with strangers.

It follows Starmer’s announcement last week that Britain will be the first country in the world to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images.

The proposals mark one of the most significant overhauls of online child safety rules in a generation. But while campaigners and bereaved families have welcomed the announcement, questions remain over whether such restrictions can be effectively enforced – and whether legislation alone can reshape young people’s digital lives.

What will the ban do?

Under the plans, children under 16 would be prohibited from holding accounts on major social media platforms whose primary purpose is social interaction and user-generated content. The government says this will include apps such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, X and YouTube.

Messaging services including WhatsApp and Signal are not expected to fall within the scope of the ban.

But ministers insist this is about more than simply restricting access to social media. Alongside the age limit, the government plans to introduce a series of safeguards targeting the features it says drive online harms.

Under-16s would be blocked from livestreaming and prevented from communicating with strangers across a wider range of online services, including gaming platforms. Restrictions on these functions would also be enabled by default for 16- and 17-year-olds, in an attempt to avoid what ministers describe as a “cliff edge” at 16.

The government is also exploring overnight curfews and mandatory breaks from infinite scrolling for under-18s, with further details expected in July.

Meanwhile, AI “romantic companion” chatbots designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay will face a minimum age requirement of 18, and similar intimate functions on more generalised AI chatbots will also be restricted for all under-18s.

The government intends to introduce the measures through secondary legislation using powers already secured under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, allowing regulations to be passed before the end of the year and brought into force in spring 2027.

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How is it different from other countries?

The UK is not the first country to attempt to curb children’s access to social media, but ministers argue it is going further than any nation has before. Austria, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Greece, Canada, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia, Poland and Slovenia are also considering banning social media for children.

The model closely follows Australia, which became the first country to ban under-16s from major social media platforms in December 2025. Under Australia’s rules, platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and X must take “reasonable steps” to prevent under-16s from holding accounts.

What sets the UK proposal apart is its focus on harmful functionalities rather than platforms alone.

Ministers argue that children encounter risks across a wide ecosystem of digital services, including gaming platforms and AI tools. By targeting livestreaming, stranger messaging, infinite scrolling and sexually explicit AI interactions, the government says it is regulating the mechanisms that enable harm, rather than simply restricting access to specific apps.

The UK also plans to strengthen age verification requirements. While many platforms already set a minimum age of 13, enforcement has historically relied on users self-reporting their age. Now, Ofcom has been asked to conduct an urgent review into what the government calls “highly effective age assurance” technologies, which could include facial age estimation, identity checks and third-party verification systems.

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Will it work?

Evidence from Australia – the only country with a comparable nationwide ban already in force – remains limited. Early signs suggest the legislation has had some effect: Australia’s eSafety Commissioner says more than 4.7 million social media accounts were removed, deactivated or restricted in the first days after the rules came into force.

However, many children continue to access platforms by circumventing age checks. Australia’s shadow communications minister Melissa McIntosh said that “new accounts are being created and the age-verification tools that the government assured Australians would be effective, have proven laughably easy to bypass with some makeup and good lighting” – and that children had migrated to other platforms such as Yope and Lemon8, which were not included in the ban.

Researchers studying the early impact of Australia’s policy have identified a similar challenge. Young people quickly share workarounds, from using parents’ accounts to exploiting weaknesses in facial age estimation tools.

Critics argue that bans risk pushing children towards smaller, less regulated platforms or private channels that are harder to monitor. YouTube has warned that blanket restrictions could drive young users away from “curated, supervised, beneficial experiences” and towards more anonymous services.

Others question whether the debate risks oversimplifying the relationship between social media and wellbeing. While concerns about cyberbullying, harmful content and compulsive use are well documented, researchers remain divided over the extent to which social media directly causes poor mental health problems. Most studies identify associations rather than clear causal effects, and experts argue that outcomes depend on factors including a child’s age, existing vulnerabilities, what they do online and how much support they receive offline.

Supporters of the ban counter that perfect enforcement is not the point. Like age restrictions on alcohol, gambling or tobacco, they argue the objective is to establish clear social norms, reduce exposure to harm and shift responsibility away from parents and onto companies.

Public opinion appears firmly behind that approach. According to the government, more than 116,000 people responded to its consultation, with nine in 10 parents supporting a ban for under-16s. Two-thirds of young people also said children under 16 should not be allowed to use at least some social media platforms.

What happens next?

The government plans to publish more details in July, including proposals for overnight curfews, breaks in infinite scrolling and how age checks will work in practice. Ministers intend to introduce the measures through secondary legislation before Christmas, using powers already secured under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act.

Ofcom has been asked to review age assurance technologies and develop an enforcement strategy, with the government pledging additional funding for the regulator. If Parliament approves the regulations, the first restrictions could come into force in spring 2027.

The government has set out an ambitious vision. The harder task may be turning it into everyday reality. ■

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About the author: Ella Glover is the audience engagement editor at The Lead. She is also a freelance journalist specialising in workers’ rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle.

About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world. If there is something you’d like us to untangle, email ella@thelead.uk.

👫Found this edition of The Lead Untangles useful? Share it with your friends, family and colleagues to help us reach more people with our independent journalism, always with a focus on people, policy and place.

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Two decades ago, European universities were entering an exciting chapter. For generations they had worked in isolation, drawing undergraduate students primarily from their own home population. But by the mid-2000s, with European cooperation well established and open borders across the European Union, they were preparing to become one large higher education system.

Through changes known as the Bologna Process, universities began to harmonise their work so their degrees became equivalent and students could move seamlessly between countries and institutions. As part of this shift, most European universities began to offer a range of degrees taught in English, opening them up to foreign students from all over the world.

It was a savvy move: at that time, Asian universities were starting to challenge the Western domination of the global education market and Europe wanted to place its stake back in the ground. Britain could have been worried by the unfolding of this new era, with so many nearby competitors now offering similar courses which anyone could access as long as they spoke English, but it wasn’t. We were part of the gang. We were a leader in Europe, helping to drive this common progress.

Then Brexit happened. Ten years on, though our universities are still world-ranking, our global academic reputation has tanked.

Every year the Times Higher Education World University Rankings include a category asking academics worldwide what they think are the best universities today. The proportion voting for British institutions among that number has been in steady decline since 2020. In part that is because the Asian market has boomed, but the idea that Britain has closed itself off to the world of academia is proving hard to shake.

“There’s no question that UK soft power has taken a major hit,” says Phil Baty, director general of the Education World Forum. “In the early days there was an incredulity, but now it’s just eye-raising mockery about what a self-destructive decision it was. And now we do have hard evidence of a reputational decline within our world rankings. The general sense is of us being less open and less welcome.”

Just like many other sectors, policymakers didn’t spend a huge amount of time planning what Brexit might mean for universities, and the hard Brexit we eventually got was particularly damaging. Leaving the European Union had an immediate impact on the number of European students who chose to enrol in British universities, largely for cost reasons. Number crunchers working for the UK’s vice-chancellors scrambled to replace those missing students with those from elsewhere across the world, bringing higher fees with them. But the knock-on impact of this has been felt well beyond our campus walls.

“EU students would probably spend more in the local economy than those who would come in from elsewhere and also, given British voters don’t like immigration, it replaced them with students who were more likely to bring dependents with them,” says Glen O’Hara, professor of modern history at Oxford Brookes University and a campaigner to protect British higher education.

“It was a mad decision from the perspective of what the British voters will tell you they want.”

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According to the think tank Best for Britain, the loss of young European academic talent has an impact for trade and industry as well as universities. We are no longer attracting or retaining that local expertise through our university due to the lack of mobility. Negotiating a reduced EU tuition fee rate could help to redress the barriers, as well as deleting the costly immigration surcharges that now apply. “These are huge financial barriers that a lot of students aren’t able to afford,” says senior policy officer Ayesha Chaudhry.

For some institutions the pull away from Europe was disastrous. The University of Kent, for example, had adjusted its mix of courses to capitalise on its location close to the edge of Europe. It had opened up partnerships with French institutions, offering cross campus joint degrees. “For them, Brexit was a complete catastrophe,” one expert in higher education policy, based at a UK university, explains. “It was the big loser”. The institution is now merging with the University of Greenwich to create a new ‘super university’.

For academics at every university there have been huge ramifications. One consequence of our hard Brexit deal was removal from Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research funding programme. This cost British researchers millions of pounds in funding for their work and disrupted research relationships across the block. British academics became isolated.

Dame Alison Wolf, professor of public sector management at King’s College London, says that at the time Brexit was being negotiated, Rishi Sunak was unconvinced about the benefits of being part of an expensive, sometimes slow-moving research bloc. He believed direct funding at home would be more efficient. “I’m perfectly willing to believe that it is, but the reality is that modern science is incredibly super-national and the scientists were beside themselves. These were the key networks for something we did, and do, very well - and it was all being blown up,” she says.

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Since our departure Baty has observed major university alliances forming between clusters of European institutions, which he calls “powerhouse groupings”. Our institutions are nominally involved in a number of partnerships but the close, critical relationship has been lost. “Britain is now completely out of the loop of some of the most exciting higher education initiatives,” says Baty. “We were isolated long enough that some good solid research links went cold. It cooled our relationship just as everyone was working on harmonisation and alliances.”

Britain formally rejoined Horizon Europe in January 2024, and the current government is exploring ways to bring our universities back into the heart of European higher education. Since rejoining our reputation among academics has started to rise again, but the damage can’t simply be undone by membership. “In terms of hard metrics, in terms of the UK’s research standing, I think it will continue to be felt. There’s way more to come that’s sitting in the time lag. That harm will still filter through for years,” Baty says.

This affects how individual academics feel about British higher education too. Researchers and lecturers are agents of soft power around the world. They move overseas to follow a career path, and they share information globally across their discipline. Right now, they feel completely divorced from the British state. This would be bad enough, but our universities are facing a financial crisis too with student enrollments starting to drop, international competition from all over the globe and a depressing debate opening up about whether university is valuable at all.

“I don’t think in my career there has been a time when the rank and file academics are so far from the government,” says O’Hara.”The government has piled on costs when we already have no money. They just feel completely abandoned by the government, which seems paralysed by the lights in front of them like the oncoming train.”

How can any of these be unpicked? There is a lot of hope attached to rejoining the Erasmus scheme, which encourages student movement throughout Europe, and a proposed youth experience scheme to give young people the opportunity to rebuild the intellectual and social connections that build British soft power through education. “We’d be keen to see the successful negotiation of a UK experience scheme,” says Chaudhry. “The UK’s withdrawal from the EU has deprived a generation of a lot of opportunities. Being able to see progress is welcome. While it might not fully eradicate some of the damage that’s been done, it can help us.”

O’Hara thinks it will take more to save British universities from slipping down the global rankings in the aftermath of Brexit. He calls for a clear and rational planning system for our future university funding streams based on where research collaborations are working well and where students want to go, helping to rebuild our European and global links. But, after many conversations with the current government’s policymakers, he’s not hopeful.

“They don’t even seem interested in that. It’s a bizarre phenomenon when you’ve got loads of Labour supporters in higher education.” ■

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About the author: Hannah Fearn is a freelance journalist specialising in social affairs. She was comment editor of The Independent for seven years, and has previously worked for The Guardian, Times Higher Education and Inside Housing. She has a special interest in inequality, poverty, housing, education and life chances.

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🇪🇺 This is the next part in our series examining the impact voting to Leave the European Union had on the UK since June 2016. Last week we dug into the numbers around the economy, immigration and more since the EU Referendum. Next we’ll be exploring what life’s been like for EU migrants living here and how Brexit paved the way for Reform. Sign up now to make sure you receive it first.

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A series of fake, AI-generated advertisements running on X are using Nigel Farage’s likeness to scam people online.

The videos use deepfakes – AI-generated media digitally altered to convincingly manipulate a person’s likeness or voice – of Nigel Farage and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, depicting them in fabricated scenarios on a set resembling BBC Question Time.

Some of the promoted posts falsely depict Farage kicking, grabbing and lunging after Bailey, with some imagery also displaying bruising on their faces.

Farage says he has called on X to remove the adverts, while Bailey urged X users to report them.

What are the ads for and are they legit?

There are numerous ads which appear to lead to different AI-powered cryptocurrency trading platforms which supposedly help users invest their money.

Cases of fraud recorded by the National Fraud Database reached the highest levels last year, with the 6 per cent increase attributed to the use of AI to help accelerate fraud.

The Lead followed the links of numerous ads that all followed the same trail - so you don’t have to.

It starts with one of the ads promoted into your feed by a verified X account, meaning the user pays a subscription to the platform’s Premium tier.

Clicking on the ad leads to another X post with a link, which directs users to a landing page showing a fake BBC news article titled “The BBC Question Time Moment Everyone’s Talking About.”

The article details the fake fight between Farage and Bailey and, at the end, features an “editors note” that reviews the trading platform Garlinex.

The article is hosted on a website called apemaars.com, which, at the time of writing, appears to have no publicly accessible website content beyond the specific URL used in the advertisement.

The Lead ran the news article through the AI-detection tool GPTzero, which found it to be 90 per cent AI-generated.

Garlinex markets itself as a tool that “makes AI company investment opportunities easier for regular investors”. While the website is real, it has been marked as a scam website by the cybersecurity tool GrindSoft.

The report says: “This site is classified as a Scam Website based on multiple risk signals, including a very young domain (37 days), no established public user-review history, and heuristic security signals.”

The website also features a case study showing results over a 12-month period, despite the website only existing for just over a month. It also shows a Trustpilot review section that doesn’t match Garlinex’s real Trustpilot page.

Other videos, identified by Cybernews, refer to a different trading platform called Fundektris. Cybernews found that it is not a not a real company, as it has no official registration and isn’t authorised or regulated by any major financial commission, that it has been “vibecoded’, meaning that it’s likely to have been created by someone with little knowledge of website building and needs a site fast, it contains placeholders, buttons to download non-existent apps and is on several cybersecurity blacklists.

Cybernews also checked a blog post about the Farage-Bailey fight, which was also AI-generated. It is also the only post on the blog’s website and was published on the 3rd of June, 2026.

While most of the evidence points towards the ads being used to scam people, Dr Helena Ivanov, Associate Researcher at the Henry Jackson Society told Guido Fawkes that – because the ads are powered by a sophisticated agentic AI-powered bot network, with one IP address based in Belize – it could be a trial for a larger disinformation campaign by foreign actors.

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Why Farage?

Most of the ads appear to feature Nigel Farage and the brawl with Andrew Bailey. But some aren’t related to the brawl or Farage at all.

One appears to show a man with his finger on his lips standing in front of a crowd of arguing journalists in front of the Houses of Parliament, with a Union Jack flag in the background.

The accompanying text reads “Everyone should make up their own minds.”

The ads, which are related to cryptocurrency, appear to be targeting people of identity with being anti-establishment.

Given that Farage has positioned himself as the anti-establishment candidate and has repeatedly promoted cryptocurrency, the decision of the scammers to use his likeness in these ads is not surprising.

Farage is still being called to answer questions about the £5 million gift he received from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne, who invested heavily in the Brexit Party as well as Reform UK.

He was also paid £50,000 in personal speaking fees by two cryptocurrency businesses in October 2025 in the same month he said he “not aware” of crypto businesses funding his party, according to the Byline Times.

Reform’s Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill – a “statement of intent” published the May prior – set out a ‘post-Brexit roadmap to make the United Kingdom the world’s premier hub for cryptocurrency and blockchain innovation.

He also promoted Kwasi Kwarteng’s crypto scheme in April this year.

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What was Farage’s response?

While Farage says he has called on X to remove the ads, he isn’t entirely distancing himself from the depiction.

“You may have seen some bizarre AI videos on this platform today,” Farage wrote in a post on the platform on Monday evening. “Whilst Andrew Bailey and I have our disagreements, I would never take it that far!”

Speaking to broadcasters during a visit to Grangemouth on Tuesday, he added that he did not know “whether to laugh or whether to be angry” about the fake ads.

“The trouble is it’s an AI fake but it looks real in every way, and people know that the governor and I have had our disagreements over things over the years,” he said.

What about the Bank of England?

The Bank of England urged X users to report the ads. “Unfortunately, fake adverts impersonating the Bank of England and other central banks are on the rise,” said Andrew Bailey.

“These scams are designed to criminally exploit the public, especially the vulnerable, when they are online.”

He urged the public to stay vigilant and “report these scams”.

“That way authorities can better root out digital deception like this and permanently remove the fraudsters responsible for what is a truly online scourge.”■

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About the author: Ella Glover is the audience engagement editor at The Lead. She is also a freelance journalist specialising in workers’ rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle.

About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world. If there is something you’d like us to untangle, email ella@thelead.uk.

👫Found this edition of The Lead Untangles useful? Share it with your friends, family and colleagues to help us reach more people with our independent journalism, always with a focus on people, policy and place.

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🇪🇺 And we’ll be back in your inbox on Saturday morning with the second part in our series examining a decade on from the EU Referendum and the impact Brexit has had on the UK. Make sure you’re subscribed to receive it first.

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As I write this, the facts are still emerging from a horrific knife attack in Belfast.

Police have confirmed that a Sudanese man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a brutal assault that left another man seriously injured. The motive remains unknown and an investigation is ongoing.

But on X, the verdict is already in. Within hours, social media accounts were circulating the graphic footage of the attack, demanding immigration crackdowns and sweeping policy changes. Reform Leader Nigel Farage demanded the authorities “reveal the identity and status of the attacker immediately”, stating: “The public are entitled to the truth”.

The attack itself is horrifying. The rush to transform it into a political weapon, however, is becoming depressingly inevitable.

As is customary with major criminal investigations, police initially withhold certain details while inquiries continue. This is neither unusual nor sinister, but standard procedure to prevent compromising investigations or prejudicing prosecutions.

But in an age of social media, institutions are increasingly expected to operate at the speed of outrage. Authorities now find themselves under pressure to release information faster and faster because they fear what will fill the void if they don’t. The Southport riots showed us just how social media can create a political crisis before the facts have been established.

Amid that pressure to release details quickly today, the suspect was initially identified as a different nationality, before later being confirmed as Sudanese. The very demand for instant answers helped produce inaccurate information, ricocheting the misinformation across social media, generating outrage and demands for policy change targeted at deporting Somalians.

It is an impossible bind for authorities. Baying crowds on X demand answers immediately, and if those answers are not forthcoming, they assume authorities must be hiding something. And as Farage’s intervention demonstrates, there is increasingly a baked-in suspicion – propagated by populist politicians – that institutions cannot be trusted and that every delay conceals a cover-up.

But it isn’t just the police being led by X, it is politicians too.

Today, the Conservative leader Kemi Badneoch announced her party’s plans to abolish the Public Sector Equality Duty, the legal requirement that public bodies consider the impact of their decisions on people with protected characteristics.

According to Badenoch, the law has become a bureaucratic obstacle and a vehicle for “dangerous and divisive agendas”. “We are going to scrap this duty altogether,” she said. “We do not need to replace it. We need to explain to people that they should do their jobs.”

One can only imagine the relief this announcement will bring to the millions of Britons struggling with soaring housing costs, stagnant wages and overstretched public services. At last, someone is taking on the real enemy: equality impact assessments.

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Why produce a policy so detached from every day people’s struggles? The answer is right there. In the days following the abhorrent murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, sections of the right have once again sought to transform a tragedy into a wider argument about anti-racism, diversity policies and so-called “reverse discrimination”. Before all the facts had emerged, a familiar narrative about the overreach of diversity and inclusion was already taking shape. And such, parties felt compelled to respond. For the Conservatives, that has meant reaching for the comfort blanket of a culture war and proposing the dismantling of equality laws.

This is the real power of X. It does not merely host political debate; it shapes the incentives of political actors. As I have written before, the platform rewards outrage, conflict and grievance. Politicians spend their days swimming in this ecosystem, and increasingly mistake what is trending online for what matters to the country.

Since acquiring the platform, X owner Elon Musk has transformed himself into one of the world’s most influential political actors. With more than 200 million followers and an algorithm that heavily privileges his own posts, he has repeatedly intervened in British political discussions, amplifying claims about immigration, “two-tier policing”, anti-white discrimination and institutional failure to a global audience. Between late May and early June alone, Musk posted, replied to or reposted content about British politics more than one hundred times, many of those interventions focusing on the death of Nowak. In one post, Musk urged followers to share footage of the incident, accusing police of having “cravenly kowtowed” to his killer.

A healthy democracy requires space for facts to emerge, investigations to conclude and evidence to be weighed. X rewards the opposite: falsehoods, opinion and rage. And these interventions are no longer confined to the darker corners of the internet. Britain’s political agenda is increasingly set not by parliament or the newspapers, but by whatever is generating the strongest emotional reaction online.

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The government cannot stop bad actors exploiting tragedy for political gain, but perhaps it can stop pretending this is a regretful but ultimately unavoidable product of modern life. If ministers are serious about social cohesion, democratic resilience and preventing another Southport-style explosion, they need to get a far firmer grip on the platforms that are profiting from division. Ban X. It has no place in a modern, functioning democracy.

And if the Conservatives want to be taken seriously as a government in waiting: they might consider shutting down their X accounts first. ■

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About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead and a freelance political journalist and broadcaster.

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Back in June 2016, the Leave campaign made a bunch of promises, on migration, on red tape, and famously, on NHS funding (who can forget the bus?)

Ten years later, have any of their promises worked out?

We dug into the data for the first part in our series examining the impact of the EU Referendum a decade on…

Working out the economic impact of Brexit is hard.

Things like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have also affected the economy. And we can’t know for certain what would have happened if we’d stayed.

But the data suggests the UK’s economy hasn’t performed as well as others. Based on GDP per person, adjusted for inflation, the UK economy was growing at a similar speed to other G7 countries between 2016 and 2020 but much more slowly after.

GDP is the headline measure of the size and health of a country’s economy, usually based on the total value of goods and services (output) produced.

Researchers at King’s College London, Stanford University, the Bank of England and the University of Nottingham estimated by early 2025 UK GDP was between 6 per cent and 8 per cent below its pre-Brexit level. Business investment was down by between 12 per cent and 18 per cent and employment by 3 per cent to 4 per cent.

They compared growth over the decade to 33 comparable countries, finding the UK had underperformed. They used survey responses and accounts from firms to analyse what impact Brexit had on them, allowing the researchers to separate out the effect of things like the pandemic.

Trade is tougher, but maybe not quite as bad as it could have been

Mostly there was agreement on how Brexit would impact the economy. Voting to leave meant uncertainty leading to less investment. Actually leaving meant more trade barriers.

While the Withdrawal Agreement ((a legally binding treaty between the UK and the EU that set the formal terms of Brexit and was signed in January 2020) means no tariffs on goods, there are now border checks. For some services, there are now more regulations to navigate.

Goods exports to the EU exceeded £215 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019 but have not done so in any calendar year since. They were £184 billion in 2025, 14 per cent below 2019.

For non-EU countries, goods exports exceeded £210 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019. While they’ve remained below that since, the gap has been smaller. They were £202 billion in 2025, or 8 per cent below 2019.

Imports from the EU are 2 per cent below their 2019 level, but imports from the rest of the world are now 10 per cent higher.

Trade in services has performed better. In 2024, exports of services to the EU were 18 per cent above their pre-Brexit/pandemic peak. UK exports of services to non-EU countries were 23 per cent above their 2019 level in real terms in 2024.

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The dirty water that’s come with ditching EU rules

Brexit would give us freedom from EU rules, the Leave campaign claimed.

However, we’ve mostly avoided scrapping the regulations from before Brexit. Doing things differently risks bigger trade barriers, so the Government is now seeking closer alignment.

And, as the public outcry over Britain’s dirty beaches shows, we might quite like some EU-style regulation.

The EU’s Bathing Water Directive played a big part from the 1970s onwards in getting the UK to clean up its act. There were concerns standards could slip without EU oversight.

Post-Brexit figures on water quality suggest the cleanliness of UK bathing waters didn’t keep pace with the EU.

The Office for Environmental Protection, set up to replace EU oversight in England after Brexit, found regulations to protect rivers, lakes and coastal waters weren’t being implemented properly. No longer using the EU system left information gaps and EU evaluations of how water quality monitoring works hadn’t been replaced.

Public anger has pushed the Government to take action on water cleanliness. And while Brexit means the freedom to make regulations more UK specific, it’s possible we’ll still end up heading in a similar direction to the EU.

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We got the immigration system promised, but not the reduction in net migration

The Leave campaign pledged to ‘take back control’ by replacing EU Freedom of Movement with an Australian-style points-based system that treats EU and non-EU citizens equally.

Post-Brexit changes to immigration policy broadly reflected that. But Government choices didn’t always line up with their pledges to reduce net migration.

EU citizens now need a visa to live, work or study here, the same as non-EU citizens. But the new system made it easier for non-EU citizens.

The new Skilled Worker visa reduced the minimum education level and salary required to take up a job here. The Government also re-introduced a post-study work visa allowing overseas postgraduate students to stay for work after their course finished.

Government policy, such as a target to increase international student numbers or allowing care workers to be recruited using the Skilled Worker visa, combined with sector needs, leading to a sharp rise in migration.

UK universities were keen to recruit more overseas students paying higher fees to balance their books.

Social care had struggled to keep and recruit staff as the economy opened up post-pandemic. The Government chose not to follow a recommendation from the Migration Advisory Committee to fund higher wages to attract more British staff, so employers recruited abroad.

Then net migration hit 944,000 in the year ending March 2023. And the Government started to make it harder and less attractive for anyone to migrate here.

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People from the EU are now more likely to leave the UK than arrive

Just 76,000 people came from the EU to the UK in 2025, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures. In 2016, it was more than half a million.

The rules on freedom of movement didn’t change immediately after the Referendum but fewer EU citizens arrived and more started to leave.

The Migration Observatory suggests political uncertainty and UK jobs becoming less attractive, as Brexit hit the value of the pound and southern European economies improved, may have influenced people’s choices.

The number leaving has broadly stabilised or even started to decline. But once freedom of movement ended on December 31, 2020, there was a sharp fall in the number of EU citizens willing to get a visa to move to the UK.

And some UK citizens decided to head for the EU too

When EU citizens moved back to Europe, some British citizens seem to have gone with them.

Britain was the most common previous country of residence for people moving to Poland in 2019. As well as Polish people returning home, the numbers likely also included their children born in the UK, and around 300 British citizens, according to a 2020 report from Statistics Poland.

United Nations data shows the number of people living in Poland who had been born in Britain jumped by nearly 70,000 between 2015 and 2024. Romania saw its population of British-born people increase by 21,000 and Malta by 17,000.

British citizens abroad have also become less likely to move back or come to the UK. Since the ONS changed its methodology for estimating numbers in 2022, the number of people leaving the UK has stayed around 250,000 a year, but the number coming here has fallen from 166,00 to 110,000.

The NHS got more money but not as a result of Brexit savings

Ahead of the Referendum, Vote Leave said, on the side of a bus, “We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead”.

Ten years later, UK health spending is a lot higher. But it has little to do with a ‘Brexit dividend’.

For a start, there was no extra £350 million a week to spend. That figure, based on the UK’s gross EU contribution of £18.8 billion, failed to account for the rebate the country also received.

Once we’d settled the ‘divorce bill’ for EU commitments the UK had already agreed to, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated direct savings from Brexit of £14.6 billion a year by 2024/25, or £281 million a week.

But this wouldn’t go very far. In March 2020, the Government planned an extra £55.5 billion in departmental spending by 2024/25, including more money for the NHS to keep up with demand and replacing EU funding for agriculture and regional economic development.

Slower economic growth post-Brexit means lower tax revenues than expected. Filling that gap and paying for the higher spending has mostly come from higher taxes, more borrowing, and cuts for some departments.

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And the promised replacements for EU funding didn’t appear for everyone

In their 2019 manifesto, the Conservatives promised to replace “overly bureaucratic” EU funding to support regional economic development. It said the UK Shared Prosperity Fund would, at a minimum, match previous funds in each UK nation.

Since we left the EU, local and regional funding has become much more complicated, and has been widely criticised for not matching EU funding.

Between 2014 and 2020, the UK received an average of £1.2 billion a year from the EU, or about £1.7 billion in today’s money.

Of the funds designed as replacements, there’s been:

• the Community Renewal Fund - £220 million in 2021/22

• the UK Shared Prosperity Fund - £3.4 billion between 2022/23 and 2025/26

• the Local Growth Fund - £1.5 billion between 2026/27 to 2028/29

There’s also been:

• the Levelling Up Fund - £4.8 billion between 2021/22 and 2024/25

• the Pride in Place Programme - £5.6 billion over the next decade

Money from schemes directly aimed at replacing EU funding has only averaged £654 million a year (or £687 million in today’s money) over the seven years between 2021/22 and 2027/28.

If you add up all the local funding sources, it averages out as £1.4 billion a year. That’s a bit more in cash terms than the EU funding, but adjusted for inflation, falls short in comparison at £1.5 billion.

Governments in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland have complained they’re getting less money. Allocations have been criticised for being based on flawed formulas or missing some areas entirely.

We’re no longer sure it was the right result

Just under a third of people (32 per cent) said, in hindsight, Britain was right to vote to leave the EU, according to YouGov polling in February 2026. In comparison, more than half (55 per cent) think Britain was wrong to vote to leave.

Mostly its Leave voters, particularly younger ones, who’ve changed their minds

Initially around 90 per cent of them said Britain was right to vote to leave. But that slowly fell to 80 per cent during Brexit negotiations and only two-thirds of Leave voters (67 per cent) thought it was the right choice in February this year.

But it’s still hard to agree on what we want

Given the Brexit delivered wasn’t the Brexit promised, and, in hindsight, we’re not sure it was the right choice, it’s not surprising there’s not much enthusiasm for the current UK-EU relationship.

Most Britons (70 per cent) would now support Britain having a closer relationship with the EU, without rejoining the European Union, the Single Market, or the Customs Union. And that includes 61 per cent of Leave voters.

But it’s not clear if there’s a way to do this that would actually work for everyone.

For Remain voters, closer is good, rejoining would be better. Leave voters would rather stick with what we have or get more distance than rejoin the EU.

Surveys have previously suggested, when it comes to a closer relationship, Leave voters are in favour of ending checks on goods or gaining access to the single market, but less keen to follow EU rules or accept freedom of movement.

And the EU would also get a say on what a closer relationship might look like. And it seems there’s only so close a relationship can get before the UK would need to rejoin something. ■

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About the author: Claire Miller is a freelance journalist who specialises in using data and the Freedom of Information Act in her reporting. If you enjoyed this story then take a look at Claire’s feature on child poverty in numbers and also apathy in the UK too.

🇪🇺 This is the first part in our series examining the impact voting to Leave the European Union had on the UK since June 2016. We’ll also be exploring what’s happened to universities, what life’s been like for EU migrants living here and how Brexit paved the way for Reform. Sign up now to make sure you receive it first.

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Nigel Farage has been accused of politicising the tragic death of Henry Nowak by claiming it is proof that Britain operates a “two-tier” policing system.

The claim has sparked a major political row, with the Prime Minister calling Farage’s response “unforgivable” and violent protests breaking out on the streets of Southampton.

Nowak was stabbed five times by Vickrum Digwa in December 2025. When police arrived, Digwa falsely claimed he had been the victim of a racist attack — and officers handcuffed the dying Nowak while leaving Digwa unrestrained. Digwa was jailed for life on 28 May after a jury rejected his self-defence claim. The release of bodycam footage showing Nowak’s arrest as he lay dying has sparked national outrage and a highly politicised debate.

Farage jumped on the issue and called for “pure cold rage”. He has been accused of inciting the riots that broke out on Tuesday in Southampton, which led to 11 police officers and a police dog being injured. His critics – including the Prime Minister Keir Starmer – say he is exploiting a family’s grief to stoke division. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood denied claims of two-tier policing, stating, “I don’t think it’s helpful for us to start pitting either majority or minority communities against one another”.

Reform’s Robert Jenrick echoed claims of two-tier policing. He said: “Are we living in a country where the colour of your skin dictates, to an extent the way in which you’re treated before the law and anti white racism is not taken seriously whilst racism against ethnic minority communities is prioritised?”

What has Farage actually said?

Farage claimed Nowak had been treated “in a way where an accusation of a racial slur was treated more seriously than an act of murder”, and called the silence from political leaders “proof that we live in a two-tier police society.” He called for “pure cold rage” and demanded an end to what he described as “anti-white prejudice” in Britain.

At PMQs, he told the House of Commons: “The instructions that are given to police officers from police bosses are clear and written down in ink. It says you must treat different ethnic groups in different ways.”

When critics accused him of inflaming tensions, he doubled down: “You will get political commentators saying that I’ve stirred up this problem. Well, of course, they always do that. They don’t want to address the issue.”

His remarks are markedly different from those he made in the aftermath of Sarah Everard’s death – who was kidnapped and murdered by Metropolitan Police constable Wayne Couzens in March 2021.

At that time, he said her death “must not turn into attacks on men and police”.

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What is two-tier policing?

The term “two-tier policing” has been growing in usage in recent years, but was originally used around the time of the 1981 Brixton riots in the context of over-policing and institutional racism against specific communities.

Increasingly though, the term has been co-opted by the far-right to suggest that police treat certain groups – particularly minorities – more favourably than others. Sometimes, this refers to people on the right versus the left. In this case, Farage is suggesting that white British people are treated more harshly than ethnic minorities.

While the term gained mainstream attention during the 2024 Southport riots, it had been building on the British right for several years.

Cases involving prosecutions for offensive social media posts, criticism for police handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and concerns over the treatment of grooming gang victims have all been cited as evidence by figures on the right that authorities in the UK have been quicker to act against some forms of extremism or criminal behaviour than others.

During the Southport riots, “two-tier policing” became a widespread rallying cry on the far-right, when the police made hundreds of arrests and courts handed down swift sentences in order to put a stop to the rioting, misinformation and violence.

Figures including X owner Elon Musk popularised calling Keir Starmer “Two Tier Keir”, while Farage said that “most of us think that ethnic minority groups are policed entirely differently to that of white British people”.

Where do the claims come from?

Farage’s comments at PMQs appeared to refer to a 2022 document called the Police Race Action Plan, which was drawn up to address racial bias in the police force. The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) committed to “responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances and experiences,” and stated that this “does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’”.

This is not the only document that offers guidance for police behaviour. The College of Policing’s code of ethics states: “We earn the public’s confidence when we listen to what they have to say, make decisions that are fair and unbiased, and are open and honest about our decisions.”

The NPCC has since announced it will review the wording and that it will review the race guidance. But Sarah Jones, the policing minister, said that the commitment does not form the basis of any training or any police activity.

But it is not the first time this claim has been made. The National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, published by Baroness Louise Casey last year, found that the ethnicity of perpetrators involved in grooming gangs has been “shied away from” by authorities, with ethnicity not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators. The report said that ignorance and a fear of being seen as racist were part of the reason why.

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Is there any evidence for two-tier policing in the UK?

Following proceedings, Digwa was sentenced to life in prison with a 21-year minimum for murdering Henry Nowak. Despite the tragedy, his family has said “we do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension.”

In general, there are no official figures on anti-white bias in operational policing. Last year, the Home Affairs Committee published a report on Monday on the police response to Southport riots and found there was no evidence of “two-tier policing” in officers’ handling of the levels of violence and criminality during the period. It branded the claims as “disgraceful”.

However, the figures that do exist show that there has been a longstanding bias against ethnic minorities, especially Black people. Police use of force – such as Taser use – and coercive powers such as stop and search – are used more often against Black people than white people. In 2022, IOPC found evidence of highly discriminatory messages being exchanged between Met officers.

In 2023, Dame Louise Casey’s investigation concluded again that the Met was institutionally racist. It found that one Muslim officer had bacon stuffed in his boots, a Sikh officer had his beard cut and minority ethnic officers were much more likely to be disciplined or leave, as well as excessive use of force and stop and search on Black people.

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What comes next?

Henry Nowak’s family has called for full transparency and urged the Home Secretary to ensure the IOPC has the resources and independence to complete its work.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), has been investigating the officers’ conduct since the night of the murder. It is examining body-worn video and material from the trial, and the officers involved are currently being treated as witnesses.

In a recent statement, IOPC engagement director Derrick Campbell, said: “This investigation is going to fully establish the circumstances of the case including whether there may be misconduct on the part of any of the officers involved.

“The ongoing commentary about the evidence and speculation risks prejudicing any potential processes and preventing Henry Nowak’s family getting the answers they deserve.”■

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About the author: Ella Glover is the audience engagement editor at The Lead. She is also a freelance journalist specialising in workers’ rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle.

About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world. If there is something you’d like us to untangle, email ella@thelead.uk.

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🇪🇺 And we’ll be back in your inbox on Saturday morning with the first part in our series examining a decade on from the EU Referendum and the impact Brexit has had on the UK. Make sure you’re subscribed to receive it first.

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What does it tell us that a centre-right politician is poised to introduce a wealth tax?

For years, such taxes have been treated as an obsession of the radical left — the sort of policy aired enthusiastically at fringe events before being dismissed by serious politicians. Yet in Hungary, Péter Magyar, successor to long-serving populist Viktor Orbán, is now proposing exactly that.

The detail of his policy is still unclear, but the outline is striking enough: a 1 per cent annual tax on those with assets above 1bn forints (£2.4m), covering shares, property and other holdings, including wealth held via spouses, children and assets abroad. His finance minister will set out further details in the coming days, but the real significance is not the tax itself, but what it suggests about where public opinion has now moved

Politicians consistently underestimate how widespread support is for wealth redistribution. It cuts across ideological lines, age groups and voting habits. A 2024 poll by the Fairness Foundation found that three-quarters of Brits are worried about wealth inequality, while another YouGov survey found a similar majority in favour of higher taxes on wealth. The question is no longer whether redistribution is popular in principle, but when governments feel compelled to act on it.

Hungary helps explain why. Orbán’s rule saw the emergence of an extraordinarily wealthy elite whose fortunes were closely linked to state patronage and public contracts. As reported by The Guardian, 38 of the 50 richest Hungarians acquired their wealth under Orbán’s rule through public tenders or benefited from them indirectly. Magyar presents his wealth tax as a way of returning some of this money to the public coffers.

This is where Britain feels different — but only up to a point. Corruption here is not systemic in the same way, but we have had our own moments where public money has flowed in ways that have left a lingering sense of unfairness. The Covid era, in particular, still looms large: VIP procurement lanes, political contacts shaping contracts, and £15 billion spent on unusable PPE. Britain may not be Hungary, but it is not immune to the feeling that there is one set of rules for ordinary taxpayers and another for those close to power.

So what of wealth taxes themselves? Certainly, they are no silver bullet. They run into difficulties without much scrutiny. Firstly, the more money you have, the better you are at hiding it, making the money difficult to access. And while warnings that the wealthy will immediately decamp to sunny Dubai are often overstated, experience from countries that have experimented with wealth taxes suggests that some relocation at the margins is a real, if limited, risk.

And while proposals such as the Green party’s proposal to implement a 1 per cent levy on assets over £10m could raise significant sums — around £10bn a year in the Green Party’s estimate — they would not, on their own, transform Britain’s finances.

But that rather misses the point. In politics, taxation is not only about revenue, but about what people believe the system is for. A wealth tax is a signal as much as a policy. As Magyar himself has put it, it is “not a punishment, but a sign of social justice and solidarity in a functioning and humane country.”

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Here in Britain, the deeper question is not whether a wealth tax is right or wrong, but why it now feels thinkable at all. That shift reflects something broader than tax policy: a growing sense that the economy has become detached from fairness. We tax earnings heavily, but treat accumulated wealth more gently. Council tax is increasingly indefensible; national insurance is incoherent. The result is a system that too often feels as though it rewards what you have over what you do.

Readers of The Lead know a wealth tax is an important step, we previously looked at what it would take and what it would involved.

A one-off wealth tax may or may not form part of the answer. But the more important shift is that ideas once treated as peripheral are now being drawn into the mainstream. Here in the UK, the government has so far shied away from substantive tax reform, wary of anything that smacks of “the politics of envy” or a tax on ambition.

But this is all increasingly out of step with public sentiment. From left to right, there is a growing sense that the system is not working as it should — and a growing willingness to consider changes that once would have seemed radical.

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The question is not whether a wealth tax on its own would transform Britain, but why proposals like this are no longer outside the bounds of serious politics.

So what does it tell us that a centre-right politician is poised to introduce a wealth tax?

It tells us that wealth redistribution is no longer a radical idea at the edge of politics — and the left’s ideas might just be more popular than we’re led to believe. ■

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About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead and a freelance political journalist and broadcaster.

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🏆The Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism was awarded on Monday night, and a story published by The Lead about miscarriage of justices was on the final shortlist. Adam Bychawski should be really proud of his work and we’re proud of having been brave enough to publish it and put the spotlight on an important issue. Many congratulations to and Khadija Sharife for picking up the top prize. It’s well worth a watch of the video below with Private Eye as Adam reveals more about the story.

Help ensure original, investigative and in-depth journalism about progressive topics can survive and thrive by becoming a paid supporter of The Lead today.

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Birmingham is often seen to be the capital of heavy metal in the UK’s rock history, but Stoke-on-Trent has been staking a claim too.

Motorhead frontman Lemmy and guitarist Slash of Guns’N’Roses both hail from the Potteries and it is this rich musical heritage the six towns want to build upon.

Our exclusive report this weekend comes from Helen Dalley at The Knot who last week joined our growing family of local newsletters.

Beginning in 2024 the local news title and newsletter rooted in Stoke and Staffordshire [the flag of which gives its name to the The Knot] packs a punch and we were delighted to visit Stoke and confirm they are now a part of The Lead’s award-winning local network

We’re excited to be able to bolster what Helen and team have been doing by ensuring they can dig deep on all that’s happening in Burslem and beyond.

In today’s story she does exactly that and takes us into how there’s a revival plan for making more of Lemmy’s story.

We’ll also be featuring some of our original local journalism in our national edition, like we are today, to show what’s happening in different parts of the country.

At The Lead we want to ensure our journalists are embedded in communities and build a network of local newsletters bringing the stories that need telling to light. So support us by becoming a subscriber today and get 30% off for the first year

Burslem bets on the legacy of Lemmy

It’s 10.30am on a gorgeous sunny morning at the first-ever Burslem Urban Rock Festival. Blue skies hang over the mother town, while the Lemmy statue — unveiled just over a year ago — basks in the sunshine as keen fans begin gathering near the stage for a day of heavy metal. Outside new venue Old No. 6, visitors sup Motörhead-themed ales against a backdrop of photos, band artwork, and other memorabilia.

There are big plans afoot for the town, the centrepiece of which is a proposal to transform the Art Deco Queen’s Theatre into Kilmister Halls, a 1,500-capacity music venue complete with a recording studio and music school. At the forefront of the project is festival organiser IFK Legacy, which is dedicated to keeping alive the memory of Burslem’s most famous son, Lemmy Kilmister, who was born here on Christmas Eve in 1945.

The bands haven’t even started but it’s standing room only at Old No. 6 as I grab a few words with director of the IFK Legacy David Ovenden, and Andy Edwards, the Stoke-born creator of the statue that’s already attracted thousands of visitors to gaze on Lemmy’s likeness, with his long hair, tight jeans, bass, and trademark high mic position. Over the low hum of bikes revving their engines, Ovenden confirms that the viability study for Kilmister Halls is set to be finished within the next month.

He says they will also be speaking with the Arts Council, Architectural Heritage Fund and the National Lottery to bring the venue back into use. “The first phase will be the auditorium, but we’re asking for a lot of money, like £19 million, so it’s going to take time. But we’re thinking about bringing it into use earlier without even painting the walls, just get the electrics sorted out and the toilets, so we could do that next year.”

Reviving the Queen’s Theatre will not be straightforward. The building has sat largely unused for years and securing multi-million-pound heritage funding in the current climate will be a challenge. But supporters believe Lemmy’s international fanbase gives Burslem a cultural hook few towns of its size possess.

“We’re hoping to open up Kilmister Halls as early as next year” - David Ovenden, director, IFK Legacy

People from all over the world have come to pay tribute to Lemmy since his statue was unveiled just over 12 months ago, says Edwards as we chat in Old No. 6. “The main thing about this place is the atmosphere is so good, and every time you come in, it’s different. You sit around a table and there’s three different nationalities. It feels like home to me and it seems like I’m not the only one. The walls are full of donated memorabilia, even though we’ve only been going for three weeks.”

While Lemmy-themed ales, including a pilsner, Overkill, named after the 1979 Motörhead album of the same name, are already being pulled, they’re still waiting on a delivery of Lemmy Lemonade, which is coming all the way from New Zealand. Andrews is emphatic that Burslem is becoming a rock hub. “It’s not just us – there are seven other local music venues that are putting on music today.” In fact, the festival sparked three days of live music across the city over the bank holiday weekend, with venues including Burslem’s Old Post Office, Grumpy’s Motorcycle Garage, Ye Olde Crown and Hog Noggins among those hosting events.

In addition to showcasing six local bands before top cover band Motörheadache perform, the festival has attracted several rocker-themed stalls, including alternative clothing brand Grimm Prints. Selling items including screaming skull t-shirts and camo trucker hats, owner Craig Robinson, who’s based just down the road in Rugeley, says he likes to support small festivals like this. “It’s great to be part of the first ever festival of its kind here,” he enthuses, adding that he supports the idea of Kilmister Halls. “There needs to be more music venues. Unfortunately, in the West Midlands now, music venues are dying out. The only way bands can make money these days is with merch, which is one thing I offer to smaller bands, so they don’t have to print 1,000 t-shirts.”

A little further up the road is Barewall Art Gallery, which is stocked with cool Motörhead memorabilia, including tees, Lemmy-themed ceramic plaques, and even a limited-edition head cat Lemmy, a nod to Lemmy’s old psycho billy band, created especially for the gallery by local ceramicists Dappled Sky. With only 100 made, a portion of every sale goes to the IFK Legacy Project.

Owner and curator Amanda Bromley says having the statue so close to the gallery has encouraged them to embrace more of a rock vibe. “When the statue was unveiled, it was great – we had Lemmy’s boots and hat on display here – and since then, we’ve helped the guys at IFK out by selling merchandise up until they had their own space, Old No. 6.” The gallery’s visitor book has been penned by visitors from more than 60 countries, she adds.

Bromley points out that Burslem has been ‘down on its knees’, and believes that Lemmy is helping to save the town saying: “He’s brought this new spirit where people can feel positive about what’s going on and it’s brought everyone together. Now we have investment going on in the town, like Burslem market, and the Wedgwood Institute is being repaired and then of course Queen’s Theatre. This is not going to just transform Burslem but the whole city.

“We don’t want to stop until Kilmister Halls are open, and we want to make the rockers feel welcome.”

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Bromley is also selling postcards of the poem written by Stoke-on-Trent’s poet laureate, Steve Beattie, ‘Ace of Spades in Stoke on Trent’ (you can see him reciting it for the Knot here). A big Motörhead fan – he’s got a tattoo of the ace of spades on his hand in reference to their biggest hit and the band’s logo, Snaggletooth, on his left arm – Beattie couldn’t be happier to see all this going on in his home city. “It’s just great to pay tribute to Lemmy – without Motörhead, there might not have been bands like Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, and Slayer. Every time you drive past the statue, somebody’s at it, and they’re coming from all over the UK and further afield. It’s helping to promote the live bands we have in the area, too, and doing a huge amount for all the local businesses.”

“Lemmy is not only helping to transform Burslem but the whole city.” Amanda Bromley, owner, Barewall Art Gallery

The band opening up for the festival, Walking Alone, is a heavy rock trio who are all aged just 14. Singer Olivia, who is also a back-up singer for one of Stoke’s longest-running bands, Grace, has the confidence of someone much older as they introduce their own songs and blast through Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, and Foo Fighters covers before bowing out with their take on Motörhead’s ‘Bomber’.

Lead singer/bassist Olivia says it was “absolutely amazing” to open at the festival. “It’s crazy, I don’t think I’ve seen so many people in this area before,” she says, adding that her band are already hoping they can play Kilmister Halls someday.

What follows is a high-octane line-up of metal, heavy rock, alternative and emo (our faves are alt rockers Mercury): among the crowd are kids as young as 9 or 10 wearing Motörhead, Metallica, and Nirvana t-shirts, while older fans with grey beards likely there to witness Motörhead’s heyday in the 80s clap enthusiastically as they are entertained by a new wave of rockers inspired by the New Wave of British Heavy Metal that Lemmy’s former band made famous. Later in the afternoon, there’s a mosh pit, but it’s all good-natured fun. Ovenden later tells me the festival drew a peak crowd of around 4,000 Lemmy devotees — no small achievement for a town with a population of just 7,000 to 8,000.

In-between sets, corner shops are doing a roaring trade as rockers line up for cans, crisps, and snacks, while local burger restaurant Smash on Trent is blasting out AC/DC as fans dig into super dirty burgers and Phili cheese steak fries.

But it’s the pubs that are benefitting the most: a few steps away from the stage at the Bursley Ale House, a popular hang-out for Port Vale fans, the queue snakes out the door for pints of Road Crew, an American Pale Ale named after Motörhead’s iconic track, as a DJ mixes up a blisteringly loud roster of heavy metal faves from Pantera, Korn, Metallica and AC/DC. Outside, groups of mates bask in the sunshine and pair their pints with cheese and bacon oatcakes. The mood is upbeat, and the feeling is that something positive is happening here.

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A fan who’s travelled from Nottingham, Phil, who is here with his two friends, is keen to tell me that he met Lemmy once in LA at his favourite haunt the Rainbow Bar and Grill and brought him a Jack Daniel’s and Coke, the drink he was famously devoted to. Another quartet of cool-looking fans, two originally from Poland who now live up the road in Chesterton, tell me their friends have travelled here from Slovakia. “We’re here because we want to pay tribute to Lemmy,” says the group’s spokesperson, Henryka.

As the sun goes down on Burslem’s first-ever urban rock festival, it feels like the start of something much bigger for the town. I cast a glance over to the Queen’s Theatre, where the windows have been decorated with letters spelling out “Lemmy Forever”. Since the statue was unveiled last May, many fans have paid tribute to one of heavy metal’s most famous sons. It remains to be seen where things will stand next year, but if the IFK Legacy have anything to do with it, then us Stokies might well be watching bands in the Queen’s Theatre sooner rather than later.

At the Bursley Ale House the queue snakes out the door for pints of Road Crew, an ale named after Motörhead’s iconic track, as a DJ mixes up a blisteringly loud roster of heavy metal faves.

Indeed, in 12 months’ time, Ovenden is hopeful that they will be using the venue in some way, and a bigger event is already being planned for next year. He also says that talks are ongoing with the council to market Queen’s Theatre and the Market Hall as a joint venue, and that plans are even being floated for a two or three-day festival to be held here in Burslem.

As for the long-term, Ovenden hopes that Kilmister Halls will be operating as a charitable organisation, with any money generated to be ploughed back into outreach projects, be that music or the arts in general. Sunderland Fire Station has proved an inspiration, he says. Hosting more than 200 shows a year, including live music, dance, and comedy, it’s also home to a rock school plus bars and restaurants.

As Lemmy once said, “You can’t be a legend in your own lifetime. It’s only after you’re dead that you become a legend.” In a town that has often struggled to find its feet, Burslem’s embrace of Lemmy feels about more than heavy metal. It’s an attempt to build a new identity from a cultural legacy that already has global reach. ■

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About the author: Helen Dalley is the editor of The Knot, based in Stoke-on-Trent.

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This week, two separate investigations by Hope Not Hate and Searchlight unearthed a slew of violent and misogynistic posts from Reform UK’s candidate for the Makerfield byelection, Robert Kenyon.

Among sexual remarks about high-profile women and connections with far-right characters such as the leader of the neo-fascist New British Union – and plenty of other heinous and questionable posts – Kenyon made numerous anti-abortion comments.

He called abortion a “cowardly act of murdering a defenceless baby” and suggested women falsely claim to have been raped in order to terminate their pregnancies.

Responding to a post by the comedian John Cleese, Kenyon said: “Don’t dole out the ‘what if someone is raped by their brother’ arguement [sic]. Life begins at conception. Abortion is the cowardly act of murdering a defenceless baby and not having to face up to it cause a Dr did it. They don’t want babies? Use contreception! [sic]”

In other posts he also claimed that people advocating the right to choose were “usually the lefty crowd”, adding: “Because the left are actually evil.”

These came from three social media accounts: a now-deleted Twitter/X account, one that was suspended, and a Facebook account that Kenyon said he was “mothballing” days before his candidacy was announced.

The party has dismissed what it is calling “an establishment hit job” and defended Kenyon’s right to express his personal views. “In this country, this issue has always been a matter of conscience, regardless of which party a politician represents,” a spokesperson said.

But such sentiments are hardly specific to Kenyon. Despite having no public stance on abortion, Reform UK has consistently aligned itself with anti-abortion views, individuals and organisations.

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Reform’s track history on abortion rights

When parliament voted on decriminalising abortion last summer, all four Reform UK MPs who voted – Richard Tice, Lee Anderson, Sarah Pochin and James McMurdock – voted against decriminalisation. Party leader Nigel Farage chose to abstain.

Just last month, the party stood the prominent anti-abortion campaigner, Lois McLatchie Miller as a candidate for Westminster council in London. Miller previously worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a US-based legal organisation that’s spent years campaigning against abortion rights and backing legal efforts to restrict access internationally.

ADF has been linked to the wider legal movement behind the overturning of Roe v. Wade and has expanded its work into Europe – and it reportedly brokered meetings between Farage and White House officials in 2025.

Farage also appointed anti-abortion academic and chair of the Edmund Burke Foundation, James Orr, to be Reform’s policy lead in February this year. The foundation organises the anti-abortion National Conservatism Conference, where Farage has twice been a speaker.

And Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, which has paid Farage nearly £370,000 since he became an MP, is on the board of the anti-abortion ARC forum alongside Orr and Reform MP Danny Kruger.

Elsewhere in the party is Maria Caulfield, a former Conservative MP who repeatedly voted to restrict abortion access — including opposing buffer zones around clinics, voting against at-home early medical abortion, and describing abortion providers as “unethical, unsafe, and unprofessional” and Ann Widdecombe, another former Conservative MP and long-time member of the parliamentary pro-life group and vocal opponent of abortion rights.

Then there’s former Tory turned Reform supporter and longtime anti-choice activist Nadine Dorries, who called the Labour party the “party of death” for decriminalising abortion; and former home secretary Suella Bravermen who said abortion “up until birth” (her framing of decriminalisation) was “repulsive”.

Meanwhile, Farage has stated that allowing abortion up to 24 weeks - the current legal limit, supported by medics and women’s rights advocates - is “ludicrous” and suggested that MPs should debate rolling it back. Debate over the legal limit has long been viewed as a Trojan horse used by those who seek to curtail women’s choice.

Shifting the dial

A recent investigation by openDemocracy and The Fuller Project suggests that this is more than just – as Braverman and others have suggested – “a matter of individual conscience”.

Researchers examined almost 80 Reform, Reform-supporting, and far-right X accounts and found that mentions of abortion rose significantly between April 2024 and April 2026 and found that British far-right political parties and influencers, including Reform UK, are increasingly focusing on abortion as part of wider culture war politics inspired by trends in the United States.

The later posts increasingly used emotive and extreme language, including anti-abortion misinformation. One example was the phrase “abortion up to birth”, which appeared 18 times in the earlier two-year period but rose dramatically to 190 mentions in the following two years.

The investigation showed that abortion-related activity across the selected accounts increased sharply. Nearly half of the accounts became more active on the issue, while total impressions for abortion-related posts almost quadrupled compared to the previous two years. These posts were shared around 153,000 times and gained more than 800,000 likes. Researchers also identified a growing network linking anti-abortion groups, far-right influencers, and Reform-linked figures, with accounts frequently reposting one another’s content and publicly supporting Reform.

Several prominent political figures criticised the decriminalisation of abortion. Former Home Secretary and Reform UK MP Suella Braverman stated that Reform would reverse the changes, while far-right parties including Restore Britain, UKIP, and the Heritage Party expressed similar positions. Other Reform figures also used strong language: councillor Darren Grimes called decriminalisation “morally repugnant”, mayor Andrea Jenkyns described it as part of the “degradation of society”, and London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham accused the government of treating “the ending of life as a policy solution”.

Given the nature of Kenyon’s comments, and Reform UK’s track history when it comes to abortion rights, The Lead asked Reform UK what its official policy was on abortion healthcare. We didn’t get a reply.

Kerry Abel, Chair of Abortion Rights, told The Lead that Reform UK’s position shows exactly why the pro-choice campaign group has been “sounding the alarm about the mainstreaming of anti-abortion politics for years”.

She said: “Their attacks on abortion rights are a direct threat to women’s rights, bodily autonomy and access to essential healthcare.”

So no, Kenyon’s comments are not a blip. Nor are they, as Kruger put it, simply the opinions of “an ordinary man from an ordinary place”. Opposition to women’s reproductive rights is at the heart of Reform’s ideological position – whether they state officially or not. ■

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About the author: Ella Glover is a freelance journalist specialising in worker's rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle. You can find her work in Prospect Magazine, Dazed, Observer Magazine, Women’s Health and - most importantly - here at The Lead.

The Lead is keeping an eye on Reform UK and their fellow travellers. Get in touch on X, Bluesky and Instagram or email ella@thelead.uk with tips and stories. We especially want to hear from readers whose local council is now run by Farage’s followers. See our full ReformWatch archive.

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Keir Starmer is about to be exposed, yet again, for a failure to think big. This week, Alan Milburn’s long-awaited report into why there are so many young people out of work and education will finally be published. He has already described to the press that he found a “system failure”, which leaves £25 spent on benefits supporting jobless youngsters for every £1 allocated to programmes to boost their chances of finding sustainable work.

Milburn, previously a cabinet minister in the Blair years and election advisor to Labour, praises the efforts Starmer has made this time round on education and health and the promise of a youth work guarantee. But his diagnosis will be damning: he says the support system for workers in early adulthood needs a complete reset.

The headlines will be dominated by a debate over what that “reset” should mean for welfare and benefits. There are some stark findings in the report, particularly around the link between disability benefit claims and long-term exclusion from work. Of those who claim a personal independence payment (PIP), for example, only one in four are in work by the age of 24. Being out of work in that crucial time period is known to be linked to lifelong worklessness.

The report also highlights that those who can and want to work (acknowledging some disabled claimants never will) could be put off getting stuck in because of the huge drops in income - up to £2,000 a month that can result when they transition into paid work. This is because there is a “cliff edge” where rising earnings mean entitlements slip away, even if a job is only temporary. Nobody would put themselves through forcible impoverishment. As the report will explain: “There is almost no intermediate step - no gradual build-up, no trial period that genuinely removes the fear of losing everything if a job does not work out.”

Those who say this is a failure of government policy are absolutely right, but this week you’ll sadly hear more noise from those who are wrong, with their diagnosis of a pandemic of laziness and a cultural tolerance of welfare dependency.

What’s not being discussed at all is how young people are the hardest hit by huge external barriers to employment, however hard they want to work. Take transport, for example.

In major cities like London this is easily overlooked, but for most areas of the country the lack of reliable, affordable transport is a huge infrastructure burden on working age people.

Car owners have higher levels of access to employment, but according to a parliamentary review of local transport published late last year, 22 per cent of households do not have access to a car: 40 per cent of those are low-income homes - the ones in most need of connectivity.

Lower skilled jobs themselves often require car access to out-of-town locations, but even the town centre roles are hard to reach when bus services have suffered route cuts of between 50 per cent and 80 per cent in less than 20 years.

Fifty-seven per cent of working-age people in England live in areas where it’s very hard to access a workplace within 45 minutes using public transport. Young people between 16 and 24 have the lowest car access among the population, and the cost of running one is rising weekly as geopolitical crises hit fuel costs at home. Meanwhile women and girls also reported they had not pursued some employment or training options due to safety of transport available to them. More than a third of women surveyed by the British Transport Police say they have been sexually harassed or abused on a train,

People do want to work. Lord Wolfson, the boss of Next, shared this week that his firm now receives 19 applications for every shop-floor opportunity, twice the number filed a handful of years ago. That’s not the sign of a nation that’s given up and taken a collective duvet decade. There are fewer jobs available, but people are clamouring. What if it’s not the welfare infrastructure that’s the biggest barrier to greater youth employment, but the way the rest of our infrastructure is failing too?

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As you climb up the age brackets, new infrastructure problems arise. At the last election, both the Conservatives (still the official opposition, we must remember) and Labour committed to improve access to childcare by fully-funding 30 hours of term-time childcare per work for families with two parents in paid employment. But the funding provided has failed to keep up with the real costs of staffing nurseries effectively and the business costs of keeping them open in a cost of living crisis.

What happened next was entirely predictable: some smaller nursery settings closed, others ratcheted up their costs, often multiple times within the same year, putting huge pressure on already tight family budgets. Many have used “add on” costs to bridge the gap, which include payments for meals, nappies and other sundries are high prices. Some are now refusing to admit pre-school age children because the funding for that age group is lower, leaving parents with a year to cover between nursery and school age. Cheaper settings, including childminders, are also closing in record numbers.

Childcare is economic infrastructure. When the cost of working becomes too high, or childcare is too hard to find, it is impossible for two parents to sustain employment. Sky high rental payments (the average first-time buyer is now 34, and the average first-time mother is 29, so first children are often born into a private rented home) add to universal credit claims when two parents can no longer meet nursery fees.

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Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has this week written to the Competition and Markets Authority asking them to investigate the fees that nurseries are charging parents. The government wants costs reduced for parents, but the only way it can do this is find more money of its own to subsidise at a higher rate. Parents feel connected to their childcare providers; they trust them with the most precious thing in their own lives every single day. Phillipson may soon find they are on the side of the struggling staff, fighting to keep settings open in an impossible situation where every cost they incur is rising.

Starmer’s announcement of a handful of summertime cost of living measures, including reduced cost family days out, were a nod to the challenges that young and mid-adult voters are facing. Yet it has a touch of Rishi Sunak’s covid-era ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ about it: it sounds great in a speech, but doesn’t make much difference (though it could make things worse for the government). Those policies touch everybody but speak to nobody. For those trying to find £1,700 a month in nursery fees for two children, a day out isn’t going to make a lot of difference. If you can’t afford to feed your children, you’re not spending money on a day at the zoo.

The crisis in employment might be pinching our young people the hardest but its fingers are on everyone’s skin. When there are 19 good quality applications for every single shop job, we are all suffering. Milburn’s report is a useful starting point for a conversation that needs to be much bigger. The “system reset” we need isn’t just about benefits, disability and job services, it’s the way our whole economy operates. Burnham needs a big vision to challenge Starmer - one that’s wide and deep enough to take in everything that’s stopping us working and living the way we deserve. ■

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About the author: Hannah Fearn is a freelance journalist specialising in social affairs. She was comment editor of The Independent for seven years, and has previously worked for The Guardian, Times Higher Education and Inside Housing. She has a special interest in inequality, poverty, housing, education and life chances. Zoë Grünewald is away.

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After four years at The Lead, I’m stepping away from my role as National Editor.

When we launched in 2022, we set out with a simple but ambitious aim: to tell the stories others weren’t, and to do it with humanity and impact. We didn’t have the scale or resources of legacy newsrooms – but we had a clear purpose. And I’m immensely proud of what we’ve built so far.

From the start, The Lead has sought to shine a light on underreported injustice. That has meant investigating systemic failures – from my own reporting on NHS sickle cell care and rural racism, to our sustained focus on child poverty and the structural inequalities shaping people’s lives across the UK. We have consistently backed stories that didn't make it into the mainstream news agenda, and trusted our pool of contributing journalists to pursue them with patience and diligence. That trust has paid off.

We have proven that impactful journalism doesn’t require vast resources, just editorial courage and a commitment to the communities we cover. Across our titles, we’ve been recognised with award nominations and wins that place us alongside some of the biggest names in British media. It’s not just about a pat on the back (although that is nice), but the acknowledgment of the value of the stories we prioritise, and that the voices we elevate deserve national attention.

None of this would have been possible without the team. It has been a privilege to work alongside such a talented, passionate and collaborative group of journalists. In a small newsroom, every story is a collective effort. The creativity, care and hard work that goes into each edition of The Lead is something readers don’t always see, but it has made this publication what it is.

And, of course, none of it exists without our readers. Independent journalism is only as strong as the community that supports it. If you believe in what we do – challenging power, platforming overlooked voices, and telling the stories others don’t value – I urge you to subscribe and help support that mission.

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As I step away, The Lead is entering an exciting new chapter. Our national publication will be shifting to taking a deep dive into the issues you’ve told us matter most – ensuring we tell the full story around a topic, not just in writing but with video too as we did with St Helens last year. We’ll begin in June with a comprehensive look at ten years since the Brexit referendum: a defining moment that continues to impact British politics, identity and public life. Make sure you’re signed up to get it first.

We’re also seeing growing recognition for the consistently agenda-setting journalism we do, having secured a place on the shortlist at the Publisher Newsletter Awards as best politics newsletter for our national edition and also best local/community newsletter for our Lead Local network of titles. It’s richly deserved praise for our team and it’s fantastic to see us alongside the likes of the FT, The Times and many other places with much bigger budgets and bigger staffing than us on the shortlists.

As well as our deep-dive stories, you’ll still see us in your inbox each week, and loads of what you love will remain. You’ll still receive razor-sharp Westminster analysis from Zoë Grünewald, and Reform Watch will continue to track Farage and his goons, and our explainer series The Lead Untangles will keep cutting through the noise on the stories that matter. And our growing network of award-winning local news titles continues to expand and go deeper, and we announced this week The Knot in Stoke-on-Trent will be joining our network.

It has been an honour to help shape this publication from the beginning. I leave with enormous gratitude – for the team, for all of our contributors, and for you, our readers. Thank you for being part of this journey. We couldn’t do it without you – and with your support, The Lead will continue to thrive.■

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About the author: Natalie Morris, formerly National Editor of The Lead, is a freelance journalist, author, podcast and host – specialising in social justice, culture and inequality. Find more of her work over on Substack and Instagram. Natalie will continue as a contributing editor and writer on some of The Lead’s future stories.

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It’s a sad indictment of British political debate that when people are asked why they are voting for the Green Party or Reform UK – or why they might prefer Andy Burnham to be Prime Minister – they will often reply that “it’s time for a change”.

As well as making the country sound like an infant who has soiled themselves, it empties the supposed “change” of any substance beyond personalities. That’s how you get people saying they are torn between voting for a party lead by Zack Polanski or Nigel Farage, when one wants to tax billionaires and save the climate, and the other wants ICE-style deportations and to “drill, baby, drill”. Both would certainly be a change.

Climate and energy policy are some of the main victims of this shallow political culture. This despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran reminding people that the UK’s reliance on oil and gas is a “cost-of-living” issue. The UK is reportedly going to import diesel and jet fuel made from Russian crude oil in third countries, though the government has defended this as a way to “phase in” new sanctions on the Kremlin.

There’s also the little matter of the climate crisis. A report out this week by the independent Climate Change Committee describes the threats to the UK from rising temperatures.

A press release notes: “By 2050, 92 percent of homes are likely to overheat, peak river flows will be up to 45 percent higher and water supply shortfalls could exceed five billion litres per day.” The report offers a list of steps the UK can take to adapt to and mitigate these risks, from installing air conditioners and heat pumps to investing in flood defences.

Of course, one of the best things to do would be to emit less carbon dioxide. As the CCC’s last (June 2025) progress report details, net zero by 2050 is not going to be easy. But it’s far less costly in every sense than runaway climate change – a conclusion endorsed by the Office for Budget Responsibility. As if to underline the point, in March the CCC said the entire cost of net zero would be less than a single Ukraine-style fossil fuel price shock.

Why is such an important subject being ignored? This is partly the fault of Westminster lobby reporters, who cover politics as a cross between sports and celebrity gossip. Despite the many hours of current affairs TV and radio, and not counting the 24-hour news channels and the endless podcasts, the media has still not found time to clear up whether new North Sea extraction would cut people’s bills. (It won’t).

As for the print media, most of it is actively misinforming the public on this question. Much like the basic facts about immigration (down by two thirds since Labour was elected, etc.), there somehow isn’t time or space for all that boring evidence. Better to talk about which party leader (or would-be leader) has the common touch.

The political parties have to take their share of the blame. Zack Polanski’s self-styled “eco-populist” turn in the Green Party has tended to emphasise the “populist” bit over the “eco” one. He has defended this on the grounds that people already know the Greens have good climate policies.

This might be sound electoral strategy, as their by-election and local council wins would suggest, (though I suspect it might also reflect Polanski’s priorities). But it does leave the discussion of climate and energy policy open to other actors.

Into that void has leapt Farage’s Reform, which is offering a straight anti-climate ticket, with the promise to scrap carbon targets and support for renewable energy, and to approve new fossil fuel projects, including a green light for fracking and coal plants.

As DeSmog has reported, Reform has received £24 million from donors with financial interests in fossil fuels since its founding as the Brexit Party in 2019 – two thirds of its income to date.

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It’s often overlooked that Reform’s biggest donor, Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne – he of the undisclosed £5 million Farage “gift” now subject to a parliamentary standards probe – makes most of his cash from selling jet fuel via his company AML Global Fuel.

As with mass deportations, Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives have more or less copy-and-pasted Reform’s climate policy, making themselves politically redundant while robbing the country of a centre-right alternative.

Meanwhile, Labour’s cratering popularity and resulting leadership contest threatens one of the few areas where the government is not hobbled by timidity. Energy secretary Ed Miliband has quietly got on with the energy transition, lifting the ban on onshore wind power, approving a record number of solar farms, and (with a fudge on drilling near existing projects) holding firm on Labour’s ban on North Sea licences. He has also helped frame the government’s response to the Iran war, with his “fossil fuel rollercoaster” line taken up by Starmer.

A leadership contest would be a good opportunity to build this into a wider programme for using state power to improve working people’s lives. But a Labour fratricide could also see climate dropped or relegated to appease a party faction or voter profile, or to remove Miliband as a potential rival. With an Energy Independence Bill in the works, this would be a terrible moment to abandon climate policy to “chaos without Ed Miliband”.

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For all the talk of politicians being “out of touch”, it’s worth recalling that climate action is overwhelmingly popular, with recent polling by More in Common and IPPR finding that the Right’s jihad against net zero isn’t working. It’s also a potential wedge in Reform’s shaky electoral coalition, and an opportunity to tie them to greedy and polluting fossil fuel corporations and their bomb-happy political friends abroad.

That said, the biggest reason to fill the climate-shaped hole in our politics is that climate change is a scientific fact, and the case for action is based on a mountain of evidence. Call me old-fashioned, but I think people should tell the truth, whether or not it’s politically convenient, in step with the latest opinion polls, or trending online. A bit of truth-telling on this and much else would be a political “change” worth making. ■

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About the author: Adam Barnett is UK News Reporter at DeSmog and a freelance journalist. He writes a politics column for the Big Issue and has reported for The Guardian and Private Eye

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The Lead today announces the acquisition of The Knot, adding to its stable of award-winning local newsletters.

The Knot is based in Stoke-on-Trent and was launched in 2024 by founder James Routledge to provide independent and optimistic journalism for the six towns and North Staffordshire area.

He has been supported by local journalist Helen Dalley who will stay on as editor of The Knot. Founder James Routledge will remain part of the team to offer advice and support.

The Lead’s local network includes titles in Blackpool, Lancashire, Teesside, Southport and Calderdale. In 2025, that network won Newsletter of the Year at the Press Gazette’s Future of Media Awards. It has a focus on health, inequality, environment and telling the stories of places left behind by political neglect.

The Knot is the second addition to that network in 2026 following the launch of The Valleys Lead, covering the south Wales valleys, in January with Lauren Crosby Medlicott as editor.

Mike Harris, publisher of The Lead’s titles including its national edition, said: “What James has achieved in launching The Knot and building a loyal and committed readership is a credit to his work as a social entrepreneur.

“I’m delighted The Knot will be joining The Lead’s family of local newspaper titles, helping us in our attempt to rethink how high quality local journalism can take root again in communities across the UK.”

James Routledge, founder of The Knot, said: “It’s a perfect match. I’m really pleased that The Knot is finding its place with The Lead network. The team are great and the ethos really aligns. I’m really excited that there’s a network of local titles like this that can grow together to reach more people in places that are having proper journalism stripped away. On so many levels, this is a good thing!”

James penned a note to subscribers of The Knot announcing the news during Wednesday morning.

Luke Beardsworth, editor of The Lead’s local network, said: “It’s not about making big changes to what The Knot does, which has already proven to be very popular and filling a real gap in the market.

“What we do want to add is The Lead’s brand of in-depth journalism to the mix and I know from our early conversations that Helen is excited to get stuck into that on a more regular basis.”

The Lead’s team is made up of Ed Walker (managing editor), Zoë Grünewald (Westminster editor), Luke Beardsworth (local editor) and Ella Glover (social media editor).

Andrew Greaves writes The Calderdale Lead, Lauren Crosby Medlicott writes The Valleys Lead, Jamie Lopez writes The Southport Lead and Leigh Jones writes The Teesside Lead. Helen Dalley will continue to write The Knot.

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Wes Streeting soft launched his Labour leadership bid this week with a statement on Brexit that shows to voters what many inside Westminster already knew: he doesn’t really care what you think about him, as long as he believes he is right.

His comment was a statement of fact, though he knew it would be attacked as a dangerous matter of opinion. What he said was this: a Labour government must move Britain back towards EU membership.

Critics within the party emerged immediately. Red wall MP Lisa Nandy said Streeting’s position on Europe was “a bit odd” and represented a “fundamental misreading” of public attitudes after their party received a drubbing at this month’s local elections. “If going back into the EU was the answer to the problems that people have in their lives, then we would be telling people in towns like mine that everything was fine in 2015,” she said.

Compared to today, things were relatively better in her constituency town of Wigan in 2015. Back then the town’s employment rate was almost 80 per cent according to the Office for National Statistics; by the end of 2023 it was at 70 per cent. Economic inactivity in the town is rising, even though benefit claims aren’t. Its economy is stagnating.

Meanwhile, Andy Burnham - the so-called ‘king of the north’ - also says he “doesn’t want to re-run” the arguments over Brexit. For years he was an outright remainer, yet now he says he “respects Brexit”.

What is there to respect? We all know it has been an unmitigated economic and diplomatic disaster. Conservative estimates place the economy at around 8 per cent smaller than it would have been if we’d remained in the union. Even the people who voted for Brexit with hope and enthusiasm no longer believe that it has represented progress.

According to a 2023 MRP poll by Focal Data/UnHerd, in the constituency that Burnham is chasing on his path to party leadership, Greater Manchester’s Makerfield, 51 per cent of voters now agree that “Britain was wrong to leave the EU”, compared to 31 per cent who disagree.

Wes Streeting is right. It is impossible to have a serious conversation both about the future of the Labour Party and, more importantly for voters, the future of the British economy without confronting the tragedy of Brexit. He is setting out a dividing line with his opponents in his willingness to be honest about the gravity of the country’s problems.

What is frustrating the electorate more than anything is a dual sense that nothing is changing for the better (the cost of living, for example, means their daily lives are tangibly more miserable by the day) and that they are still being told things slowly on the up. Starmer tried to level with voters about the complexity of the omni-crisis in the first weeks of his premiership and was accused of doom mongering. In some ways that communications misstep was the first red flag foreshadowing the predicament he’s in now, yet though his delivery was all wrong his intention was well placed.

Given that Streeting is a London MP, it’s very easy for him to speak truth about Brexit. It’s much less comfortable for the likes of Burnham and Nandy who are working for the Labour electorate that helped push the Leave campaign to slim victory a decade ago. Yet the biggest political risk any candidate can take now is dishonesty. This week the BBC dragged up an interesting clip of Burnham, recorded during his 2015 party leadership campaign, in which he warned that people were “losing faith in politics”. This is why. Voters still feel like they’re getting half the truth - and no more so than in this forthcoming Labour leadership battle.

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The race for the leadership is at risk of being painted as a Socialist North vs Blairite South fight for the soul of the party. That’s a massive oversimplification, and it is misleading to both Manchester’s voters and the whole Labour party membership. There seems to have been a strange collective amnesia about Burnham’s own political journey.

In the 2000s he was a Blairite, and he has brought many of those sensibilities to his handling of the Mancunian economy with huge success. The changes to Manchester wrought under his leadership were not the product of a huge local government investment strategy alone. What he has done so skilfully is attract private corporate investment into the city through targeted development planning and support for growth sectors while also injecting public money and control into improvements in crucial infrastructure such as public transport.

It’s not a full-on private finance initiative, but ‘Manchesterism’ is a very close sibling to New Labour economics in strategy and execution. Critics of the approach warn that though the city region appears to be booming now, there is a high risk of the wealth generated being whisked out by overseas investors in, for example, the masses of ‘build to rent’ properties that have arrived. Blood red socialists are not being honest with themselves if they think Burnham is their saviour.

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As a candidate for prime minister, Streeting has many drawbacks: he is nakedly ambitious in a way that provokes nausea in many, he is a slick messenger but perhaps more suited to the media landscape of two decades ago than the TikTok led ferris wheel of modern politics, and he is too closely linked to damaging figures of the past such as Peter Mandelson.

Yet apart from their personal presentation, there is very little that separates Streeting and Burnham apart from Streeting’s willingness to speak with a surprising honesty about very hard things - including the truth about Brexit.

It probably won’t win him the Labour leadership contest, but it is likely to secure him a respect that outlasts this shambolic era. ■

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About the author: Hannah Fearn is a freelance journalist specialising in social affairs. She was comment editor of The Independent for seven years, and has previously worked for The Guardian, Times Higher Education and Inside Housing. She has a special interest in inequality, poverty, housing, education and life chances. Zoë Grünewald is away.

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Nigel Farage is facing the threat of two investigations over the undeclared seven-figure gift he received from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

The parliamentary standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg has already opened an inquiry into the Reform UK leader after it was revealed he received £5 million from Harborne in June 2024 – weeks before he made a U-turn decision to run for parliament.

The Electoral Commission is considering whether it is opening its own inquiry into the incident.

Earlier this year the standards commissioner found that Farage had breached parliamentary rules by failing to register 17 payments worth roughly £384,000 within the 28 days required – but no action was taken as it was said the breach could “reasonably be described” as an error.

But this incident is far more serious: people familiar with standards inquiries have said it could result in suspension from Parliament and may even trigger a by-election.

What has Farage been accused of?

This week Farage threatened legal action against former Reform-politician Ben Habib who now leads the far-right party Advance UK. This is because he alleged Harborne – who was a large donor of the Brexit Party – had a “monetary deal” in 2019 to “sew up” the election.

Harborne paid Boris Johnson £1m in 2022. He also donated over £10 million to the Brexit Party in 2019. While Habib never explicitly stated that Farage was paid to rig the election, Farage said his lawyers have formally written to Habib to demand “an immediate apology and public retraction for the baseless allegations he made today”. In doing so, he amplified the allegations to 1.3 million people on X alone.

Also this week, Sky News reported that Farage’s £1.4 million property – which was bought in cash by his partner Laure Ferrari, and drew questions over tax avoidance– was bought shortly after he received Harborne’s £5 million donation.

However, a spokesperson for Reform said: “The relevant chronology is straightforward. The offer and purchase process for the property commenced before the gift.

“Mr Farage had already passed proof of funds and the relevant checks before receiving the gift. The purchase was therefore already proceeding independently of it.”

Farage initially told the Daily Telegraph that the gift was to pay for his personal security. On Thursday he told The Sun that it was an “unconditional” gift “given as a “reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years”.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Harborne also said he “wasn’t expecting anything in return apart from ensuring his [Mr Farage’s] safety”.

He said: “I gave him the money because of my great admiration for the decades of work he had done to achieve Brexit. He had stood down from politics and barely had any income before he went into the [I’m a Celebrity ...] jungle.”

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Who is Christopher Harborne?

Harborne is a 63-year-old businessman and technology investor from Yorkshire. He now lives in Thailand where he goes by the name Chakrit Sakunkrit.

Over the past seven years, Harborne has given more than £22m to Farage’s political parties. That includes £12 million to the Brexit Party and £10m to Reform that accounts for two-thirds of all funding received by Reform UK (previously called the Brexit Party) and also included a £9m donation to Reform UK in August 2025, which was the largest single political donation ever made in the UK by a living person.

In January, he gave Farage £27,616.76 so he could attend the second inauguration of Donald Trump and paid another £32,836 for Farage and a member of staff to fly to the US following the attempted assassination of Trump in July last year.

Harborne also gave more than £266,000 to the Conservative party between 2001 and 2018.

He was an early investor in cryptocurrency and is a joint owner of Tether, the company that issues the most widely-traded cryptocurrency. When Farage was asked in December about his donations, he said, “Does he want anything from me? No. Absolutely nothing in return at all. He just happens to think that we’ve not made the most of Brexit, that we’re not getting into the 21st-century technologies.”

According to the Guardian, Harborne took a desk in the Brexit Party’s campaign headquarters, where he conducted his crypto business. Gawain Towler who was Farage’s communications chief and sits on Reform’s board said “I never heard Harborne] say, ‘And I want you to have this policy.’ Because, you’ve got to remember, the Brexit party had only one policy, and that was to have Brexit.”

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What rules has Farage potentially broken?

Reform UK denies any wrongdoing and says the money was a “personal unconditional gift” unrelated to politics. However, MPs say he should have declared it in the MPs’ register of interests when he was elected to Parliament in 2024.

Following the news of Harborne’s gift, Farage was referred to the parliamentary standards commissioner by the Conservatives, which cited rules that require MPs to declare any “personal benefit” they have received in the 12 months before taking office, and to do so within a month of being elected.

Under the House of Commons code of conduct, “new MPs must register all their current financial interests, and any registrable benefits (other than earnings) received in the 12 months before their election within one month of their election”.

The rules say that “purely personal gifts or benefits” from family or commercial loans would not normally have to be registered and that “both the possible motive of the giver and the use to which the gift is to be put should be considered”, adding “if there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered”.

The Conservatives have also raised concerns about the £5m gift to Farage with the Electoral Commission, which said it was considering the information.

What comes next?

The parliamentary commissioner’s investigation is underway and the electoral commission will confirm whether it will investigate further by the end of the week.

MPs who are judged to have broken the code of conduct face a range of punishments from a written or oral apology to suspension from the House or even expulsion, in the most serious cases. ■

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About the author: Ella Glover is the audience engagement editor at The Lead. She is also a freelance journalist specialising in workers’ rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle.

About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world. If there is something you’d like us to untangle, email ella@thelead.uk.

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Who, on earth, would want to be Keir Starmer’s successor?

Not many. To put it mildly, it’s a bit of a s***show. Even before this government came into being, enthusiasm was weak. It arrived less on a wave of encouragement and more on exhaustion with what came before. That kind of coalition — broad, shallow, and highly conditional — doesn’t last long without visible change.

And that’s the next leader’s real challenge: not just to govern competently, but to convince people, very quickly, that politics can actually make their lives better. And I mean very quickly. Because if patience was thin before, imagine it now.

The good news, if there is any, is that there are ways to do it without fantasy economics or constitutional overreach. A mix of tax reform, smarter regulation, and clearer signals of priorities could shift the mood. Some of it would cost money, some of it would raise it.

But the point is simpler; that this would be a government that is doing things, knows when the system isn’t working and is taking the fight to Reform.

So, a few starting ideas.

Tax reform

Not sexy, but politically explosive in the best way. The system, as it stands, is arbitrary and unfair: capital is treated more lightly than work, council tax is wildly outdated, and avoidance loopholes are everywhere. Aligning capital gains more closely with income tax, re-banding council tax properly, and closing obvious avoidance routes wouldn’t solve everything, but it would signal a government committed to basic fairness.

There are other interesting tweaks and reforms: a land value tax, or even abolishing national insurance and folding it into income tax with adjusted rates, to name a few. There’s plenty that can be done if the government wants to be creative, and crucially, there’s already more cross-party agreement on this than people admit. It doesn’t have to become ideological warfare. Who can argue with fixing a broken system?

Misinformation and media regulation

Here, the UK’s problem isn’t the rules — it’s the enforcement. On social media, outrage now moves faster than facts, hardly corrected, and platforms simply amplify whatever is loudest. You can already see US-imported narratives shaping Westminster debate in real time, with the leader of the opposition spouting the latest algorithm-driven talking points.

Meanwhile, the line between news and commentary on certain broadcast channels has blurred badly, with regulators sitting on their hands. The result is a potential future prime minister with a prime-time TV spot on his own propaganda outlet, and a political ecosystem where truth matters less and less.

This isn’t about censorship, but catching up with the modern machinery of populism. Stronger transparency on algorithms, faster enforcement against false claims, and a properly empowered regulator would all help. Working with European counterparts would matter too. Strength in numbers, and all that.

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Europe

The economics of Brexit are now fairly hard to ignore. Trade has underperformed, investment is weak, and most credible estimates suggest the economy is roughly 6-8 per cent smaller than it would otherwise have been.

At some point, a Labour leader will have to be honest. Closer alignment helps, but deeper integration would help more. Re-joining the EU isn’t a next-week policy, but as a long-term direction — and an honest depiction of the facts — would boost growth, restore frictionless trade, and widen opportunity for younger voters.

And politically, it reframes everything. If you want to take on Reform UK, you don’t just rebut them, you offer an alternative future: open, pragmatic, outward-looking, directly challenging their nostalgia or grievance. And what better way to show the snake oil of Farage than to drag up the failures of Brexit.

Student loans

Nothing embodies the generational squeeze like the student loan system. What was meant to be support into our futures has become a long-term penalty for taking it. High fees, opaque interest, and repayments that linger for decades create a lifetime tax on an already beleaguered generation, for whom wages are stagnant, jobs are disappearing, and housing is unaffordable.

The problem is also clarity. Most people don’t really understand what they’ll repay, or when, or how much it ultimately costs them. That’s rather unlike any other loan we know. Trying to make that system relatively fairer doesn’t have to mean writing everything off overnight, but it does mean making it simpler and more honest. The government could lower interest rates, unfreeze the repayment threshold, tighten repayment structures, or — if they were feeling really brave — move toward a clearer graduate tax model so the generations who benefitted from free education pay their share.

At its core, this is about a basic political signal: that a Labour government understands younger voters are under pressure, and is willing to start easing it, not just observing it.

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Standards in public life

If you want to stop populism taking root, you have to start with public trust. There’s a real sense across the country, still lingering since the expenses scandal, that politicians are ultimately in it for themselves. You hear it on doorsteps all the time from disgruntled voters. It feeds Nigel Farage and his anti-establishment pitch, and it corrodes how all politicians are perceived.

For any future leadership to rebuild that trust, it has to show it understands people expect more from public office than they currently get. Tougher rules on second jobs — with only tightly defined exceptions — would be a start. There’s no convincing reason MPs should be earning hundreds of thousands on the side while claiming to prioritise their constituents.

Alongside that, stronger oversight of ethics rules, tighter donation limits, and swifter consequences for breaches would help restore the basic idea that rules actually matter. Closing loopholes around foreign money, crypto-donations, and opaque funding streams would also make a tangible difference — not just in reducing potential influence, but in signalling that politics is a serious, clean system.

None of this is easy, of course and all of it is politically risky. All the hardest problems — housing, immigration, social care remain slow, expensive and resistant to quick fixes.

But that’s kind of the point. The next Labour leader doesn’t need to solve everything at once. Voters want movement, not miracles, and a sense that, however imperfectly, things are starting to shift in a direction that improves their lives.

Right now, too much of government feels like managed decline. That is not enough. The opportunity – and the danger – is that people will fill that vacuum with something louder and angrier if nothing else appears.

Good luck to whoever follows Starmer. They’ll need it. ■

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About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead and a freelance political journalist and broadcaster.

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Local elections catch-up: As well as our in-depth analysis in the aftermath of Friday’s bruising results for Labour, our Lead Local correspondents were out seeing what the mood was on the ground and the results were across the country.

• Lauren Crosby-Medlicott was there for the Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr count on a historic day in Wales.

• Jamie Lopez in Southport saw how Labour defended control of Sefton Council from Reform in an all-out election.

• Luke Beardsworth drilled into the learnings from district council elections across parts of Lancashire, as Reform and Greens tested Labour and tipped a number of councils into no-overall control. And how turnout was up.

• Andrew Greaves on how Calderdale’s Labour MPs vow to hold the new Reform-led administration to account after Reform swept to power.

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