Rachel Wolf is CEO of Public First and an author of the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto. “I went from Conservatives to Labour. Feel like I’ve been gaslit and lied to and now I’m thinking, do you know what? Who hasn’t had a turn in office? I’m going Reform because they haven’t had a shot. And I’m not being funny, they can’t do any worse than what the past governments have done.” – Woman, 40s, Labour 2024, now leaning Reform. I hope no one reading this is surprised by Reform’s results in last week’s local elections. They are the predictable result of the failures of the last decade. There is no new magic Reform voter and no new problem politicians must figure out how to tackle. They are the same people who “surprised” us in Brexit, “surprised” us in 2019, and are “surprising” us now. They voted for Conservatives, they voted for Labour, and the change they wanted didn’t happen. On economics, they were the reason the Conservatives softened economic policy and abandoned austerity, why Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen supported the nationalization of his airport, why Labour had no problems with promising rail nationalization, and why Nigel Farage is advocating to nationalize British steel. They are the people we have been writing about for the last decade. They are not protest voters – they have a very reasonable case for not wanting the incumbent parties – but they are understandably anti-political.  In the 2024 election, Labour captured this anti-political vote, for just a moment — bolstered by Tory failures — but it then immediately turned on them. Of course it did. The problems these voters have are not with the Conservatives, but with politicians. But let’s also have a reality check – those who think this is all about core economic policy or general “disillusionment” are kidding themselves. What do these voters care about? Immigration. They have consistently voted for a party that promised to lower it, in every election since 2010 – and they have instead seen higher net migration, and more boats crossing the Channel. Farage, they understandably feel, is the only person who has any claim to consistency left (and it is Farage, not Reform in general). Yes, one of the reasons they dislike immigration is economic – they think it depresses wages – but it’s not the only reason, and making them better off is not going to make this problem disappear. What should businesses care about? Three things. First, Reform are now the opposition. What we mean by that is that they now dictate the opposition narrative. They are the only people that the media, the government, will respond to. If you want to change the terms of the debate, Reform will be the ones who do it. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage attends a post-election event at the Staffordshire County Showground in Stafford, Britain, 02 May 2025. | Adam Vaughan/EPA-EFE It is also likely the case that voters will increasingly think of them as the opposition – which will in turn affect voting. Meanwhile, no left-leaning party, despite plenty of latent support, has come close to owning opposition to the government. All eyes, including Labour’s, are currently to the right. Second, the government is going to react, and fast. They will, for example: – Cut immigration and go after easy wins (such as international students). – Backtrack more on DEI and other perceived “woke” initiatives. – Feel under even greater pressure on any investment for climate (including the electricity grid). – Try and reboot the Boris Johnson-era policy of “leveling up” – and, if they have any sense, they’ll focus on small-level improvements people will notice. – Worry a lot about any pro-EU stances. Third, Reform will make the running on a much wider playing field than the government. Farage is a gifted politician who will jump on any row — any inklings that the civil service, institutions, the law, even private businesses, are going after Reform or their voters, and he will turn it into a national story that will run and run. Of course at some point soon, Reform will start facing more scrutiny.  Some will be on their policy positions. Let’s not overdo this – Labour did just fine without much policy before the election – but any clear insanity will be noticed. Reform will have to inch left on economics, make peace with supporting the NHS, and avoid straying from net zero realism to climate denialism.  Some of its positions will be unserious, although we shouldn’t underestimate how unserious, and how incapable of making any progress, voters see current politicians. From their point of view, neither Labour nor the Conservatives can get anything done.  Nevertheless, Reform must balance being anti-establishment underdogs while leading the polls (and as of last week several councils) for nearly half a decade. They’re not going to have it entirely easy.  So what happens now? The government will react. The immigration white paper is just the start of a summer of pivots that this government will make – on energy, the economy, health, you name it. If you want to understand how, you should pay attention to exactly the same people you needed to understand for the last decade.

Tim Ross is POLITICO’s chief political correspondent for Europe and the U.K. His most recent book, “Landslide: The Inside Story of the 2024 Election,” was published in November.  A year after his historic election win in 1997, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair remarked that the first thing government officials did when he got the job was take away his passport. “Seriously! Then they spend the rest of the time trying to take you traveling around the world,” he said. And since becoming British prime minister last July, Keir Starmer has found himself in a very similar situation. Whisked up in the whirl of international diplomacy, he’s been juggling the U.K.’s commitments to Ukraine, seeking to reset relations with the EU and preparing for the return of U.S. President Donald Trump. In fact, Starmer has spent more time on foreign trips than any of his immediate predecessors in their first six months in office, notching up 31 days in overseas travel. That tally has increased since the start of the new year, and Starmer is now set to join EU leaders for dinner in Brussels on Monday. Soon enough, Downing Street officials hope, he’ll also be on a plane to meet Trump in Washington. Starmer’s clearly committed to the diplomatic part of the role, and with so many international threats weighing on Britain’s economy, it’s hard to argue he’s wrong. But the air miles come with a price tag of their own. Politically, the prime minister risks being seen as an absentee, and has already been warned he’ll be accused of “fleeing” the country in the face of poor polling results. It’s an easy hit for opponents who want to portray him as out of touch, and it’s one that even the moribund Conservatives won’t miss.  Then there’s the opportunity cost. Travel takes up vast amounts of a leader’s limited time, and it’s tiring too. There’s also the time consumed hosting world leaders at home in the U.K., who come to see Starmer for lunch in No.10 or — in the case of France’s Emmanuel Macron earlier this month — dinner at the prime minister’s official country retreat of Chequers. But it’s not as if he doesn’t have other work to do. Starmer was elected with a landslide in July on a promise to rebuild Britain after 14 years under the Conservatives. Years that saw the upheaval of Brexit, two referendums, five prime ministers, a pandemic, a war in Ukraine, rocketing immigration, a National Health Service on its knees, a self-inflicted market meltdown and rampant inflation. Could former prime minister Tony Blair get a recall? | Eddie Keogh/Pool/AFP via Getty Images Upon entering Downing Street, however, the Labour team were surprised at just how much of the prime minister’s time was eaten up by diplomatic duties. Of course, this is partly because Starmer’s former chief of staff Sue Gray failed to prepare the new government for the realities of power. “There was no plan,” one government aide said. But since Morgan McSweeney, the mastermind behind the party’s election victory, replaced Gray in October, he has instilled a missing sense of discipline at No. 10, shaping a clear strategic direction. With Starmer so focused on the multiplying foreign crises, McSweeney has decided to mostly stay in London. He rarely travels with the prime minister — though that’s also because the government has a habit of veering off-course when he’s out of the country. Downing Street’s strategy for managing these competing pressures has also involved bolstering the prime minister’s team with old hands who know what they’re doing — especially on foreign affairs. For example, when McSweeney asked previous post-holders for their advice upon taking the job, he was so impressed with Blair’s right-hand man Jonathan Powell, he appointed him national security adviser. Starmer also picked Peter Mandelson, the godfather of the Blair-era Labour Party’s electoral success, to be the next British ambassador to the U.S. However, with such names from the Blair years back in Downing Street, one question stands out: Will the former prime minister himself get a recall? Surprisingly, the answer might not be “never.” While Starmer feels the pull of his international responsibilities, at some point ahead of the next election, McSweeney will want his boss back on the campaign trail rather than strolling the red-carpeted tarmac of foreign airports.  One solution would be to hand over more of the diplomacy to the foreign secretary, or even add a “first secretary of state” position to the cabinet to lighten the load. There’s recent precedent for this: Ahead of the 2024 election, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak brought back former Prime Minister David Cameron to take up the diplomatic burden, so that he could focus on campaigning. Some in Starmer’s government regard this decision as a smart move on Sunak’s part, especially in an election year. (Some were even lobbying for Cameron to be the new ambassador to the U.S.) So, could they conceivably do the same with Blair when the time comes?  There are several reasons why not: For one, there’s a risk the still vigorous 71-year-old ex-leader could outshine the incumbent. Second, the two men don’t necessarily agree on all policy points. Despite the wealth of Blair-era wisdom in Starmer’s team, McSweeney doesn’t regard the mission as a Blairite project. (And it’s safe to say that a niggling envy also persists, after Starmer didn’t quite beat Blair’s record-breaking 1997 majority in last year’s election).  Moreover, Blair remains a highly divisive figure, especially for his role in enabling former U.S. President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Giving him a foreign policy brief would be a red rag to many on Labour’s left and beyond. However, Cameron’s legacy on foreign affairs — ushering in Brexit, most glaringly — was also painfully divisive. In the end, what made the difference for Sunak was the Tories’ dire state with an election on the horizon. He needed to be able to focus on domestic issues to avoid the complete wipeout of his party, which might have otherwise followed.  Starmer’s polling numbers and personal favorability ratings are already bad, with the far-right Reform UK now within touching distance of Labour in voting intention surveys. Of course, polling can be unreliable, and there’s a long way to go before the next election. Starmer himself recently indicated to POLITICO that he won’t call the vote before he has to in 2029. Labour’s prospects would need to reach a true crisis point before Blair is ever invited back. But as the election draws closer, it would be foolish to think Starmer’s team would never be desperate enough to ask Labour’s most successful leader to hand over his passport one last time.

LONDON — Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is surging in the polls. Buoyed by a trip to Washington for Donald Trump’s inauguration, the populist leader boasts he will be the U.K.’s next prime minister. Now he and his insurgent party, best known for staking out populist positions on immigration and cultural issues, have found a new way to gun for the Labour government: net zero. The U.K. is embarking on a “clean energy sprint” to bring down its carbon emissions, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has promised, which means investing billions in green tech as well as moving rapidly to approve vast solar and wind farms and ban new gas drilling licenses. Green advocates say this is much-needed global climate leadership. Miliband’s political opponents paint it as expensive and divisive at a time when hard-pressed voters want the government to back off from their lives. Farage spies a political opportunity. “I think net zero is going to be an absolute catastrophe, electorally, for Labour,” he told the BBC in December. The rush to go green is “going to be a defining feature of the debate, I think — the political debate, locally and nationally, from now until the next election,” Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice told POLITICO in an interview. That will be, in part, because his party puts it there. Miliband’s policies make him “the most dangerous man in Britain,” Tice told the party faithful at a rally this month. Fellow Reform MP Lee Anderson, speaking at the same event, branded Miliband “a lunatic.” UP AND UP Reform — which delivered five MPs to parliament in last summer’s general election — has pledged to scrap the country’s legally binding target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and ditch subsidies for clean tech companies. It backs more drilling for planet-warming fossil fuels in the North Sea. Tice said recent flooding in the U.K. had “nothing to do” with climate change — a view sharply at odds with climate science. These positions are not shared by voters, the majority of whom believe climate change is one of the biggest issues the country faces. They broadly support ministers’ plans for big, climate-friendly investments, according to polling by YouGov. Parties like the Greens, which have even stronger climate goals than Labour, also made gains in July. “It is definitely true that Reform voters prioritize climate change less than other groups of voters, but they also don’t vote Reform for that reason,” argued Luke Tryl, director of the think tank More in Common.  The U.K. is embarking on a “clean energy sprint” to bring down its carbon emissions, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has promised. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Instead, the party has found a way to weaponize green policy by tying it to an issue on which the government is already vulnerable: Sky-high energy bills. Labour frontbenchers, including Miliband, pledged during the election campaign to cut bills by up to £300 a year. Instead, energy costs have increased steadily since they took office and are set to rise again this spring. (Labour is now reluctant to repeat the £300 commitment.) Tice, whose party finished second to Labour in 89 seats last summer, is alive to the political opening. “It [net zero] is driving up bills,” he said. “January’s bill’s gone up, April’s bill is going to go up.” If bills don’t fall like Labour promised, “people are going to be very angry,” he predicted at the end of last year. By contrast, Reform’s net zero policies would save “over £30 billion pounds a year of taxpayers’ cash,” Tice claimed. The party did not respond to repeated queries about how it arrived at the number. ‘DO PEOPLE FEEL IT IS AFFORDABLE?’ Experts agree that moving away from volatile fossil fuel markets is key to cutting energy costs in the long-term. U.K. bills, while they include green levies, have been driven up mainly by soaring global gas prices since 2022. The transition to net zero will create a “more affordable and fairer energy system for consumers,” the International Energy Agency said. But that involves complicated policy trade-offs around those levies — which push up electricity costs to pay for other climate-friendly schemes — and overhauling electricity market pricing. In the meantime, said Tryl, Labour could leave the door open to Reform if ministers do not find a way to get bills under control. “This is a question which is a lot less about Reform and much more about: ‘Does [the green] transition go well and do people feel it is affordable, that it is being fair, that it is giving us energy security?’” he said. “If Ed Miliband’s department manages to deliver that, there won’t be an ‘in’ for Reform,” Tryl added. But if Farage and co. can land their attacks, their approach follows a populist playbook in Europe and the U.S., where ambitious green policies have come under attack for their impact on voters’ lives. Former President Joe Biden poured billions of dollars of Investment into clean tech jobs — but it did not save his party from defeat at the hands of pro-fossil fuel Donald Trump. LABOUR NERVES Labour MPs understand the risk, said one person familiar with government thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I think it’s right to feel nervous if we don’t get bills down. But there’s every reason to believe that we will get bills down,” they said. Reform backs more drilling for planet-warming fossil fuels in the North Sea. | Ian Forsyth/Getty Images “No one’s under any illusion that we’ve got a fight on our hands with Reform on a range of issues … Absolutely, it’s not lost on us — the damage that increased energy bills did to the last government,” the same person added. Nonetheless, ministers are “making the right argument for voters,” they insisted. Some MPs vulnerable to Reform’s rise will hope such optimism is well placed. “Wages are low in South West Norfolk and costs are high,” said Terry Jermy, the Labour MP who pinched the seat from Conservative former Prime Minister Liz Truss in July. “So naturally people are very cautious about anything that might cost them money, and that includes measures to reach net zero.” Reform came third in his constituency but trailed Jermy by less than 2,000 votes. He backs the green push nonetheless. Climate change will be “just as important in four years’ time, or of even greater importance,” he said. MORE THAN BILLS Reform is seizing on public disenchantment with other aspects of the green transition, too, including unpopular plans to build hundreds of miles of overhead electricity cables, crucial to hitting net zero goals. Voters in his Skegness constituency are “furious, absolutely furious” about the prospect of new pylons, Tice said. “I do think [Labour] should be worried, and I think Reform think [net zero] is an issue that they can make political hay with,” said Scarlett Maguire, director at JL Partners polling firm. “They were keen to push this before the election. They’re keen to push it after,” she added. People must “feel better off as a result of the changes that are happening,” said Bill Esterson, a Labour MP and chair of parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. “People will support warmer homes, cleaner air and lower bills and the net zero that will follow. But the government must make [the] case for the practical benefits of its policies and take people with it.” GREEN WEDGE  Reform isn’t just targeting Labour. There is a growing green wedge at the heart of Westminster and the party has set its sights on the opposition Conservatives. “A quarter to a third of the existing [Conservative] parliamentary party would happily scrap net zero,” Tice said. “The rest are woke Liberal Democrats who think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread — so they’ve got a massive problem.” The Tories did not respond to a request for comment. Under new leader Kemi Badenoch — who calls herself a “net zero skeptic” — the party has shifted away from some of the green policies it adopted in government, disowning one of their party’s biggest legacies: signing the net zero target into law under Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019. That was “a mistake,” Badenoch said. The government and opposition are both still struggling to get to grips with Reform, believes Tryl. “I don’t think the other two parties have found a very good way of holding Reform to account in the way that they would one another,” he said. One key thing for the government, he argued, is not straying into a “crouchy, defensive mode” when it comes under attack over net zero. Tryl said: “If they’re going to beat Reform on this — [and] indeed if the Tories become more climate skeptic — [Labour] have got to be quite robust about: ‘This is central to our mission and making the country a better place.’” Additional reporting from Leicester by Andrew McDonald.

LONDON — Nigel Farage believes he can still “build bridges” with Elon Musk — despite the billionaire Donald Trump ally calling for his ouster. After weeks courting Musk’s support — and cash — the Reform UK leader and Musk’s burgeoning bromance appeared to hit the bumpers this weekend. Musk called for the release of far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, currently serving jail time for breaching a court order over his repeated libelling of a Syria schoolboy. Farage, keen to make in-roads with his populist-right, anti-immigration Reform UK outfit has publicly distanced himself from Robinson and declared that he would not be welcome in Reform. “I have no desire to go to war with Elon Musk,” Farage told LBC Tuesday. “Of course, I want his support. I will talk to him in America in a few days’ time. I want to mend any broken fences that might exist, I’m sure we can do it,” he added. But Farage said he wouldn’t change his view on Tommy Robinson, and said he is “on a campaign right now in America” to “educate” people about the jailed activist, who co-founded the race-baiting English Defence League party. In his initial response to Musk’s tweet calling for him to quit on Sunday, Farage said the X owner is “a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree.”

LONDON — Nigel Farage has challenged the main U.K. opposition Conservative Party to carry out an audit of its membership figures after claiming his upstart Reform UK had eclipsed it. The Brexiteer used the festive period to declare Reform the “real opposition,” unveil a flashy “ticker” to count up new recruits and claim his party had passed the 131,680 membership figure the Tories revealed at the time of the Conservative leadership contest in November. That contest’s victor, Kemi Badenoch , swiftly took to X to accuse Farage of “manipulating” support, suggesting the membership tracker had been “coded to tick up automatically.”  In response, Farage said he would allow one of the “Big Four” accountancy firms to audit Reform’s membership — if the Conservatives did the same. He said he had been contacted by “many Tory whistleblowers” saying that during the leadership contest ballots were sent to long-expired or resigned members. The Conservatives have not responded to the challenge. The upstart Reform UK party caused serious damage to the Conservatives at the summer election, winning 4 million votes and five members of parliament. It now has the governing Labour Party in its sight, with one poll this month putting Farage’s outfit ahead of Keir Starmer’s party. The war of words between Reform and the Tories began when a flat cap-sporting Farage attended a traditional “Boxing Day” fox hunt Thursday morning, where he invited his favorite GB News TV channel to hear him gloat about the “historic moment” his party overtook the Conservatives. He said 15,000 members had stumped up £25 to join the party in the previous four days, as Reform deployed a video of its ticker being projected onto Conservative HQ, turning the street the party’s color turquoise and blaring: “Merry Christmas, Kemi!”  In response, Badenoch cast doubt on the accuracy of the figures, saying: “We’ve been watching the back end for days and can also see they’ve just changed the code to link to a different site … Farage doesn’t understand the digital age. This kind of fakery gets found out pretty quickly, although not before many are fooled.”  Farage shot back on X, saying: “We understand you are bitter, upset and angry that we are now the second biggest party in British politics, and that the Conservative brand is dying under your leadership. However, this [is] not an excuse to accuse us of committing fraud.”  Reform Chair Zia Yusuf later showed screenshots purporting to be evidence of the membership figures. Critics of both parties were quick to point out that membership figures do not always equate to electoral success. Former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn racked up around 560,000 enthusiastic members before crashing to the worst defeat in his party’s history in 2019. The May local elections will be a big test to see if Farage can translate this support base into council seats. New YouGov polling in the Times shows none of the party leaders are a hit with the public. Starmer’s net favorability stands at -41, with Farage’s -34 and Badenoch on -31.

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. What a year, what a year. If you are the type of reader who enjoys remembering the painful as well as the painfully funny, this column has you covered. If you’re a different type of reader, are you absolutely certain that watching videos of puppies on the internet would not be a better use of your time right now? After the two decades that seem to have passed since the beginning of January, the year is finally coming to an end. The United Nations called 2024 the “super year” of elections — which sounds accurate. It also said that the fact that 3.7 billion voters headed to ballot boxes in 72 countries was synonymous with “strengthening democracy and good governance.” That feels slightly less on the nose. For those of us in Europe, the super season kicked off with mystery. What on earth is a Spitzenkandidat? Are we really supposed to know who Nicolas Schmit is? Luckily for everyone, it turned out we didn’t need to know either one, as her Royal Highness and Empress of Europe Ursula von der Leyen (actual title, we checked) was confirmed for a second mandate at the helm of the European Commission. Von der Leyen’s swoop back to power was accompanied by a sharp shift to the right in European politics — sometimes even to the far right. The Commission president has a new bestie in Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s right-wing prime minister. And in June, the European Parliament welcomed newcomers like far-right influencer Alvise Pérez, YouTube sensation Fidias Panayiotou and muzzle enthusiast Diana Șoșoacă. What a team. Of course, with all of the attention going to a blond woman, Emmanuel Macron had to do something spectacular. Having watched his party go down in flames in the European Parliament election, the French president decided to self-immolate with a snap parliamentary election back home, plunging his country into a political inferno that continues to burn today. No one’s talking about VDL now! Then the Brits had a go at the democracy thing. Sandwiching their vote between two rounds of French balloting, they decided Keir Starmer, arguably the most boring man in politics, was the guy they needed to shake things up. Ursula von der Leyen’s swoop back to power was accompanied by a sharp shift to the right in European politics. | Freferick Florin/Getty Images Finally, it was America’s turn. As we all know, Donny the Menace came back with a vengeance. Some in Europe are worried that the incoming U.S. president might pull out of NATO, launch a trade war and hand over a chunk of Ukraine to the luckiest Russian ever, Vladimir Putin. But we can all agree to rejoice in one thing. As he told some of his supporters before the election, we’ll never “have to vote again.” 

LONDON — It was supposed to be the moment Keir Starmer corrected months of drift with a reset that would finally set a clear course of direction for his newish government. Instead, the headlines that followed his “reset” speech on Dec. 5 served only to reinforce the view of his harshest critics: that he is an unimaginative technocrat with no grand vision for the country. After his efforts flopped with critics and voters alike, the U.K. PM was forced into days of damage control — to little avail. Polling from Ipsos, gathered the week before his speech, showed Starmer is the most unpopular prime minister after five months in office since the firm began conducting approval ratings in 1979. Reflecting on the early months of this government, a Labour minister — like others in this article, granted anonymity to speak freely — scored it “at best a medium,” adding this was perhaps understandable given “there are so many domestic and foreign crises all at the same time.” A second minister complained politicians were “so over-exposed now with the current media climate” that voters “soon become sick of governments and quickly want change.” “I think people wish they could just press a button and change ministers,” they added. Already beset by internal No. 10 divisions, a rolling scandal over freebies, worsening economic indicators and public backlash over £40 billion in tax hikes, the prime minister’s big “plan for change” speech this month was supposed to mark a fresh start, drawing a line under a bumpy few first months in power. Instead, what Starmer announced was “six milestones” for the country to judge his government on by the next election — which need not be held until summer 2029. WHAT’S THE PLAN? The speech referenced policy outcome goals, including the improvement of living standards in every part of the U.K. and bringing hospital waiting lists down to target levels. The problem was that these milestones followed hard on the footsteps of a series of very similar-sounding sets of Labour targets already offered up by Starmer over the past two years. In a bid to set a governing vision, he has now outlined two “priorities,” three “pillars of growth,” six “first steps,” six “milestones” and seven “foundations” — the only thing missing is a partridge in a pear tree, critics said of the ever expanding layers of slogans and targets Starmer has wrapped around his young government. The saga was emblematic of a government pushed in different directions by Cabinet ministers and as a result failing to resonate with the public. Downing Street now wants to funnel its key announcements through the six milestones to show the government is focused on voters’ priorities. | Justin Tallis/Getty Images One Starmer-supporting Labour MP said the fault lay with the PM’s seeming inability to communicate a clear and concise vision for the country. “No one is asking Keir to be [former Prime Minister] Tony Blair — he’s his own man,” they said. “But he could learn an awful lot from Tony’s ability to tell the story about where we’re going, and why, the perils and pitfalls we face along the way and how we’re going to triumph come what may.” A second Labour MP described the prime minister’s approach to governing as painstaking — and sometimes painfully slow. “He generally gets to the right decision, but it takes him a while to get there,” they said. FIGHTING WORDS Along with confusion over what is a mission and what is a milestone, Starmer’s big reset was overshadowed by a full-blooded attack on the civil service, the unelected and politically neutral officials who take direction from politicians, and gripes about declining public sector productivity. “Too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline,” he said. The unexpectedly inflammatory language, redolent of similar attacks by previous British governments from the rival Conservative party, was a clear sign of the prime minister’s frustration with the civil service machine since entering government. It’s a sentiment shared by many within this new government, including members of the Cabinet. One anecdote doing the rounds among Starmer’s top ministers is about how Blair, Labour’s most electorally successful prime minister, would often describe the pathologically sclerotic civil service. If postwar Prime Minister Clement Attlee came back to the streets of modern day Westminster he would be absolutely astonished by all the cars and modern technology — but then he would step into any government department in Whitehall and feel right at home, the punchline goes. One Labour government aide said their experience working with the civil service “has been positive,” but that this was not the norm across Whitehall for incoming political appointees. A BUREAUCRACY THAT STIFLES “I do think in other departments there have been very valid complaints about slow decision making and stifling bureaucracy,” the aide said. Labour grandee Ed Balls said on his “Political Currency” podcast that Starmer has “to stop blaming other people and get on and deliver.” | Leon Neal/Getty Images The first minister quoted in this piece said the previous Conservative government “neglected the civil service machinery,” but also said Whitehall mandarins essentially needed to suck it up. “They’re all grownups, they need to have clear direction in a relatively pointy way. I think they can take it,” they said. However, the language used by Starmer in public to describe his frustrations was pilloried by former Cabinet ministers from Blair and Gordon Brown’s Labour governments of 1997 to 2010. One told POLITICO the prime minister’s attacks “were ridiculous” and counter-productive. “Why take a pot shot at them like that? It’s not going to work at all. It’s very easy to criticize the civil service, but the question should then should be for Starmer — ‘What are you going to do about it?’”  A MISTAKE A second former Labour cabinet minister said Starmer’s attack on the civil service “was a mistake.” “The civil service does need change … but you have to work within the machine to fix it and together with the Cabinet secretary,” they said. Labour grandee Ed Balls said on his “Political Currency” podcast that Starmer has “to stop blaming other people and get on and deliver” and that “it’s Downing Street which hasn’t been doing well enough in the last few months.” This backlash, which included pointed criticism by public sector unions, prompted Starmer to write a letter to civil servants a few days after his speech to say they were “admired across the world.” One Labour aide admitted to POLITICO that it had been a mistake to attack civil servants in such a high-profile manner and that damage limitation was required. Despite this, Downing Street is refusing to acknowledge there had been a row back in the prime minister’s approach. One senior government aide said Starmer had “been entirely consistent in what he’s been saying and in identifying the challenges faced by government, but he also sees the civil service as a part of the solution as well.” The decision to go after Whitehall leaders so directly has already seen a backlash from civil servants, who say it shows the prime minister has no grip on the government’s direction. The problem was that these milestones followed hard on the footsteps of a series of very similar-sounding sets of Labour targets already offered up by Keir Starmer over the past two years. | Leon Neal/Getty Images One told POLITICO that the political operation in No. 10 was “chaotic” and “performing worse than any other government of the past decade.” A second accused Starmer’s team of “micromanaging” everything that other departments do to “a very unhelpful degree.” ‘BUDGET PARALYSIS: THE SEQUEL’ Looking ahead to 2025, Downing Street now wants to funnel its key announcements through the six milestones to show the government is focused on voters’ priorities. First among them is trying to improve living standards and fix Britain’s underperforming health service, with YouGov opinion polls showing these are the public’s two biggest worries. However, there are some concerns about the long gap between January and the announcement of the government’s spending review in June, which will set out its spending plans until at least 2028. There has been speculation that such a long gap will create a vacuum, as ministers are forced to bat away endless press questions about future spending decisions. One senior civil servant said the government was setting itself up for “budget paralysis: the sequel” by delaying the major departmental spending review until June. They said there had been an “unbelievable amount of effort and angst over setting one year’s spending [in the budget], and now another six months to set the actual forward programme.” That may well mean that the first six months of 2025 could look a lot like the last few months of 2024.

LONDON — The United Kingdom’s government is still working to finalize a controversial deal on the handover of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, after the new Mauritian prime minister demanded a renegotiation. Britain’s deal with Mauritius has come under intense scrutiny since it was announced in October — amid indications that key figures in United States President-elect Donald Trump’s team are opposed to the handover of islands that have long housed a joint U.K.-U.S. airbase, Diego Garcia. While agreeing a lease for the airbase, the U.K. and its new Labour government agreed to pass sovereignty of the disputed Indian Ocean islands to Mauritius last month in an agreement hailed as a “seminal moment” in London. But the deal over the islands — sometimes dubbed Britain’s last African colony — has been complicated by a fresh election in Mauritius. Pravind Jugnauth — the prime minister who agreed the deal — lost in a landslide defeat. His successor, Navin Ramgoolam, said Tuesday that his government is concerned with the deal agreed — and said he had submitted counterproposals to the U.K. “During the discussions, Mauritius made clear that while it is still willing to conclude an agreement with the United Kingdom, the draft agreement which was shown to us after the general elections is one which, in our view, would not produce the benefits that the nation could expect from such an agreement,” Ramgoolam told lawmakers. ‘NOT DEAD’ It’s prompted fresh questions to the British government. Speaking in the House of Commons Wednesday, Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty insisted London still has faith in the deal. “It’s now completely understandable that the new Mauritian government will want time to study the details,” Doughty said. “However, I am confident that we have agreed a good and fair deal that is in both sides’ interests.” A British government official, granted anonymity to discuss the agreement frankly, said the “deal is not dead.” Britain has agreed to pay Mauritius over a 99-year lease period for the use of Diego Garcia. The same official argued it is natural for a country under new leadership to ask for changes — but stressed that “there’s no more money” on the table. However, such a stance would not preclude potential front-loading of the payments. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, an ally of Trump, claimed Wednesday that he had spoken to “several members of the incoming administration” in the U.S. who feel “very deep disquiet as to what this may mean for the long-term future of [the] Diego Garcia [military base] and whether such a deal would hold.” “I am confident that he would have his concerns allayed when he sees the detail of the deal,” Doughty replied. Dan Bloom and Sam Blewett contributed reporting.

LONDON — Elon Musk met British right-winger Nigel Farage at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, Farage’s Reform U.K. announced. The tech tycoon was pictured smiling with Farage and Nick Candy — the businessperson recently appointed as Reform U.K.’s treasurer — for an hour-long meeting at the resort in Florida owned by President-elect Donald Trump. The news will spark further speculation about whether Musk intends to assist Farage’s party — which he has publicly praised while sharply criticizing Britain’s incumbent Labour government. Farage has claimed Musk is “very supportive” of him, but denied he’s sought donations from the world’s richest man. “We had a great meeting with Elon Musk for an hour yesterday,” Farage and Candy said in a statement. “We learned a great deal about the Trump ground game and will have ongoing discussions on other areas.” “We only have one more chance left to save the West and we can do great things together,” the pair added. They also thanked Trump for allowing them to use Mar-a-Lago for the meeting. The pair posted for a snap with Musk, standing in front of a portrait of a young Trump. Led by Farage — an ally of president-elect Trump — Reform has steadily gained in opinion polling and is eyeing a serious breakthrough in U.K. politics ahead of the next general election in 2029. Farage’s team did not confirm Tuesday who had initiated the Musk meeting or give further details about what was discussed. Asked earlier this month whether Trump and Musk would support his bid for Downing Street, Farage hinted he’d be at least asking for help. “Are Trump and Elon going to support me in the run up to 2029? Well, that’s what friends are for, isn’t it?” Farage said.

LONDON — Opinion polls are inaccurate, distort political debate and should be banned during the final weeks of an election campaign. That’s the view of the strategist who led the British Conservative Party’s operations in 2024 and 2019.   In an interview for a new book on this year’s U.K. general election, Tory campaign director Isaac Levido slammed the “unhealthy” dominance of polling in the media coverage of the campaign, which his side lost to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in July. Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who directed Labour’s successful election bid, also sees the argument for a moratorium on publishing polls in the run-up to voting, according to Landslide: The Inside Story of the 2024 Election.  Some industry professionals agree that political polling is broken, and needs to be given a reality check. In this month’s U.S. presidential election, for example, pollsters underestimated the pro-Donald Trump vote — as they did in both 2016 and 2020.  The forthcoming book describes widespread unease and deep anger within former Tory Leader Rishi Sunak’s inner circle at the way polling dominated the national debate before the U.K. election.  GETTING IT WRONG For one thing, the polls got the headline vote-share result significantly wrong, an error masked by the fact that the overall result — a Labour victory — was clear. Instead of a 20-point lead for Labour over the Tories, as the polls had consistently suggested, the election delivered a winning margin of half that size, with Labour securing 34 percent of the vote to the Tories’ 24 percent.  Levido, the Australian strategist who ran the Conservatives’ campaign this year and Boris Johnson’s successful run in 2019, said it was time for reform.  “I’m not arguing that we would not have lost,” Levido said in an interview published in the book. “But the inaccuracy of the polls and the reporting of them by the media increasingly play an outsized role in election campaigns. The polls are frankly given far too much attention relative to a proper policy debate, and it significantly influences how voters behave.  “I’m not sure it’s realistic to ban polls for the whole campaign period, but I certainly think some sort of blackout in the final couple of weeks, as some other countries have, would be healthy. Other countries have blackouts on TV advertising in the final two or three days of the campaign, too.” Some senior Tories said they believed their own party colleagues would have behaved better if the polls had not given Labour a lead which turned out to be twice as big as the reality, which then dominated coverage in newspapers and on broadcasts, according to the book.  Lagging more than 20 points behind in most polls demoralized Tory troops and made it harder for the party bosses to enforce discipline among elected politicians who were fighting for their own skins, party officials told the authors.  TIME FOR A BAN? Even the winners see the problem, according to the book. McSweeney, who is now Starmer’s chief of staff, ran the Labour election campaign which delivered a devastatingly efficient result. According to one Labour official, also granted anonymity, privately McSweeney agrees that polling dominated the campaign and distorted the debate.  Instead of focusing on the competing policy offers from rival parties or assessing which candidate would make the better prime minister, media reporting obsessed with the size of Labour’s likely majority. The Labour government is not likely to change the law on polling, however, the official said. Isaac Levido, the Australian strategist who ran the Conservatives’ campaign this year and Boris Johnson’s successful run in 2019, said it was time for reform. | Leon Neal/Getty Images European countries including Cyprus and Spain have rules banning the publication of polls in the final days before voting, while in Italy, publishing poll results is banned for two weeks before election day. Martin Boon, from the British polling company Deltapoll, warned well before the U.S. results came in that the polls were at risk of underplaying support for the Republicans. As for the British election, he said the polling industry’s predictions were the worst for a generation. “This is either the very worst or the second worst polling performance since 1979,” Boon said in an interview for the book. “There is something fundamentally wrong with the data we collect.”   For Levido, one answer would be to beef up the regulator by giving the British Polling Council genuine teeth and the power to impose sanctions on polling companies that fail or break the rules. “If some of these polling organizations are sanctioned by a governing body, that would help,” he said. “Landslide: The Inside Story of the 2024 Election,” by Tim Ross and Rachel Wearmouth, is published by Biteback Thursday.