Politics

When French president Emmanuel Macron stormed to power in 2017, his ability to respond to the weakness of France’s mainstream parties, capture a large centrist majority and defeat the populist right seemed to offer a model of hope for liberal internationalists everywhere. Yet despite the president’s undeniable talents as a political communicator, the fate of his administration illustrates the desperate futility of any politicians left clinging to the centrist dream. To the chagrin of countless podcasters and centrist dads, the UK has so far escaped the problems of a Macron-style revolution Between 2017 and 2025, Macron’s centrist revolution has steadily unravelled. His approval ratings have fallen from 64 per cent

It has become an article of faith in some quarters that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (the ECHR) would breach or undermine the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, played this card only last week, in response to the Reform party’s proposals for addressing illegal migration. For her part, the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, said that ECHR withdrawal ‘could affect the Good Friday Agreement and needed to be done in a way that would not destabilise the country or the economy’. Even Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform party, seemed to concede the point, saying that the Belfast Agreement would need to be ‘renegotiated’, implying that without a new

Trying to work out what is going on with global trade doesn’t get any easier. Just as the world was settling down to the new reality of Donald Trump’s trade war and governments were stitching up hurried trade deals to minimise the sweeping damage from the tariffs announced on ‘Liberation Day’ in April, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has thrown a very large spanner into the works. It has ruled that the whole exercise is unlawful because the tariffs were not approved by Congress. They will not be removed immediately – the court has allowed them to remain in place until 14 October to give Trump a

Party conference begins next week when Reform UK kick off their two-day jamboree in Birmingham. Spirits within Nigel Farage’s party are high after a successful summer in which they dominated the recess period with a well-executed ‘flood the zone’ media strategy. A steady drumbeat of weekly announcements culminated on Tuesday when Reform’s long-awaited deportation strategy was unveiled. Now, the party has received a further boost with a new poll for the i paper which gives them their highest polling to date: Reform 35, Labour 20, Conservatives 17 per cent. This is the first time Reform has hit 35 points. Polling averages are what matters most but today’s survey is a