James Heale

Labour last night held the seat of West Lancashire on a ten-point swing from the Tories. The constituency has gone red since 1992 and was mostly recently represented by Rosie Cooper, who chose to resign to become chair of the Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust. Turnout was just over 31 per cent, with Labour winning with 62 per cent of the vote and the Conservatives on 25 per cent. It is a cliche, but perhaps the most surprising thing about this result is how unsurprising it is. The result was within less than half a per cent of national polling trends: currently Labour are on course to win a three figure majority that surpasses their 1997 result. The Reform party did better than expectations, taking 4.

Who is the worst man in Britain? According to the Daily Mirror, it’s the 56-year-old former coal miner and Tory MP Lee Anderson, who clinched the award a year ago after criticising England’s footballers for ‘taking the knee’. How did Anderson, who this week was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Tory party, respond to the accolade? ‘I immediately rang my parents to thank them for all their support. It’s the first time anyone from my family has been voted the worst man in Britain, so I tried to win it two years on the trot.’  Since his election in December 2019, Anderson has emerged as the pugnacious ambassador for the Red Wall intake of Conservative MPs.

This morning Richard Sharp, the BBC's Chairman, appeared before the Culture select committee of MPs. It was a difficult session for Sharp as the panel focused on reports that he helped Boris Johnson secure a loan, weeks before the then-prime minister recommended him for the role. Johnson has denied that Sharp had given him such advice. John Nicholson of the SNP and Labour's Kevin Brennan led the way on grilling Sharp about whether he had breached any conflict of interest rules. Below are four things we learned from his testimony. Sharp insists he did not given Johnson financial advice Boris Johnson has said he is 'ding dang sure' that Sharp did not give him advice about his finances – and the former Goldman banker concurred in his evidence today.

After three months of silence, Liz Truss has spoken out – first in a 4,000-word article for the Telegraph and now in a 50-minute-long interview with the Spectator. Truss, the shortest-serving Prime Minister in British political history, feels enough time has now elapsed to give her account of her 49-day premiership, the collapse of which was caused by a combination of the financial and political markets. As the co-author of a book on her long rise and rapid fall, I was intrigued to hear Truss speak for the first time publicly about where it all went wrong. Both the interview and article make clear that Truss’s time in No. 10 has not fundamentally altered her or her political beliefs. Truss’s faith in free markets still burns bright; tax cuts remain the cure to our ails.

Tonight marks 100 days since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister – so what better way to celebrate than an interview with Piers Morgan? The charge from some of Sunak's critics like Nadine Dorries is that he's an 'invisible' 'submarine Prime Minister' who isn't 'out at the front, making the case' for his party. This evening's encounter on TalkTV gave him the chance to do just that. Morgan mixed policy with the personal, in the style he's used previously to good effect in interviews with the likes of Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer. Much of it focused on Sunak's 'five pledges' – reducing debt, halving inflation, boosting growth, stopping the boats, cutting NHS waiting times – though there were questions too about his earnings, recreations and marital life too.

‘Politics is show business for ugly people,’ said Paul Begala, famously. Westminster today, however, is more akin to a finishing school for aspiring media personalities. We live now in a new age of ‘presenticians’ – in which more and more political figures present their own news shows.  Turn on your TV and you could well be confronted by one of a dozen current or former MPs who are now anchors or regular pundits. On GB News, there’s the husband-and-wife duo of Esther McVey and Philip Davies, and Lee Anderson MP just replaced his fellow Tory Dehenna Davison as the network’s resident ‘Red Waller’. Jacob Rees-Mogg has also joined the self-styled ‘People’s Channel’.

The House of Commons voted to pass the government’s flagship trade union legislation on 30 January. By 315 to 246 votes, MPs backed enacting minimum service levels for fire, ambulance and rail services for when the sectors decide to take industrial action. It comes ahead of ‘Walkout Wednesday’ – the biggest day of strikes since 2011. It will see hundreds of thousands of workers, including teachers, train and bus drivers, walk out in separate disputes over pay, jobs and conditions. Labour has fiercely attacked the government’s plans, with Angela Rayner repeatedly clashing with Business Secretary Grant Shapps in the House over the so-called ‘Sack nurses Bill.

Speaking in Belfast this morning, Keir Starmer offered ‘political cover’ to the Prime Minister over any change to the Northern Ireland Protocol. A new deal with the EU is thought to be imminent – and Labour sees the chance for mischief. Starmer said it is ‘time to put Northern Ireland above a Brexit purity cult’ and that ‘we can find ways to remove the majority of checks’ through new solutions, adding that ‘there are legitimate problems with the Protocol and these must be recognised in any negotiations’. Starmer’s speech is well-timed His comments are a recognition of the Protocol’s relevance over the next few months.

This week Jonathan Ashworth set out Labour's answer to the 5.2 million on out-of-work benefits – a figure which The Spectator was first to pick up on. Now the Times reports on the government's own plans to help those on out of work benefits back into employment. Since the pandemic, successful disability claims are up by 70 per cent, with the Office for Budget Responsibility suggesting that the cost of long-term sickness benefits will rise to £8.2 billion by 2027. Economic growth is one of Rishi Sunak's five promises; he is said to be concerned about achieving that goal without bringing many of the economically inactive people back into work to solve labour shortages. A range of policies are reportedly on the table.