The Daily T: How long can Rachel Reeves last?
But it's going to take more than a fresh hairdo and a jolly photo op to convince voters – and indeed the markets – that all is well inside Government.
Tim and Gordon consider whether their credibility is shot for good after the welfare fiasco; how the Chancellor will handle the £5 billion hole it created; and the NHS reform plans that were overshadowed by it all.
Plus, while Nigel Farage is parking his tanks on Labour's lawn, figures on the Left are circling too. Journalist Aaron Bastani explains why the Greens and independents like Jeremy Corbyn are making gains.
He argues Keir Starmer's approach to governing is 'deluded' and 'ineffective'; Rachel Reeves's career 'is over after the autumn Budget'; and working people 'pay too little tax'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
25 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump has ‘good conversation' with Zelenskyy after heavy bombardment of Ukraine by Russia
Donald Trump spoke with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Friday as the US president appears increasingly disheartened over his chances of fulfilling a campaign pledge to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. The call with Zelenskyy comes as Washington has halted its latest shipment of military aid to Ukraine including Patriot air defense missiles and other crucial munitions meant to support the country's defenses, and hours after Russia launched a devastating air attack on Kyiv using a record number of drones and ballistic missiles. Zelenskyy called the conversation 'important and useful' and said in a post said that he and Trump had discussed Ukraine's air defense capabilities, joint defense production and 'mutual purchases and investments', all potentially avenues for Ukraine to restart aid from the United States by providing incentives for the Trump administration to rush crucial munitions to Kyiv. He said that the two sides had also agreed to 'increase aerial protection', a particular focus for Kyiv as Russia has increased bombardments of Ukrainian cities despite outrage from Trump and other world leaders. Yet it was not immediately clear if Zelenskyy had achieved any concrete progress with Trump and in his statement he did not mention the halt of aid shipments from the US or announce their resumption. Axios reported that a source described the call as a 'good conversation'. Trump said he was 'very disappointed' after a telephone call with Vladimir Putin on Thursday. A Putin aide told reporters that the Russian president was not willing to make concessions on what the Kremlin has called the 'root causes' of the war with Ukraine, a list of grievances that includes Nato expansion and Ukraine's desire to join western economic and security blocs. 'I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there,' Trump told reporters after holding a rally in Iowa on Thursday evening. 'I don't think he's there, and I'm very disappointed. I'm just saying, I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad.' The US has said that it halted the shipments, some of which were already in Poland, due to a review of US military stockpiles that suggested that the country is running low on munitions for its own troops. Germany has said that it is in 'intensive talks' to buy the Patriot missiles for Ukraine, although it's unclear whether those stocks would be available immediately. 'There are various ways to fill this Patriot gap,' a German government spokesperson told a news conference in Berlin on Friday. One option being considered was for the German government to buy the Patriot missile batteries in the United States and then send them to Ukraine. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion 'I can confirm that intensive discussions are indeed being held on this matter,' the spokesperson said. The shortage of Patriot missiles was further highlighted by the record bombardment of Ukraine in which Russia sent more than 550 drones and ballistic missiles at major cities in what Zelenskyy described as a 'deliberate act of terror'. The strike immediately followed the call between Putin and Trump, Zelenskyy said, and was a 'clear interpretation of how Moscow interprets diplomacy'.
Times
27 minutes ago
- Times
After a terrible anniversary week, is Keir Starmer finished?
At the Spectator summer party, one of the biggest events of Westminster's social calendar, much of the conversation centred around one man — Nigel Farage. The Reform UK leader and his allies adjourned to a private terrace overlooking the Spectator garden and private security cordoned off the stairs. There they sipped Dom Perignon while cabinet ministers and senior Tories including Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick circled the garden below. When the news broke that Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, was planning to found a new party there were cheers from the Reform terrace. A new Corbyn-led hard left party meant yet more pain for Starmer — and a bad end to a truly terrible anniversary week for the prime minister. Senior Tories were disparaging about Farage and his coterie of supporters. 'They're so cocky,' said one shadow cabinet minister. Labour ministers said Farage offered 'no answers'. But both parties were alive to the threat posed by the man standing a few yards from them. At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday Starmer expressed his pride in his government's achievements after a year in power, listing off what he views as the successes. Free school meals, increasing defence spending to 2.6 per cent of GDP, trade deals with the US, the EU and India. The list went on. But within a few hours he was forced to make an extraordinary retreat in the face of a mass rebellion by Labour MPs over the government's welfare reforms, leaving a £5 billion hole in the exchequer. Then it got worse. On Wednesday Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, broke down in tears at the dispatch box, prompting a frenzy in the bond markets. As the dust settles this weekend, some cabinet ministers are asking the question: is it terminal? Will Starmer, who secured a landslide majority at the last election, lead Labour into the next election? 'It feels like it's done,' said one. Certainly the polling is bleak — and far worse than that for any party in recent political history that won a landslide just twelve months before. Research by YouGov for The Times this week found that just one in five voters (21 per cent) think that Labour has done well in office so far and less than a third think they are any better than the previous Conservative government. Across a range of issues the party's voters are deeply dissatisfied with the government's performance. On the cost of living, 62 per cent of those who backed Labour at the election say the government is doing badly, while 46 per cent are unhappy with the government's handling of the NHS. On Starmer himself: 69 per cent of voters think he's weak, 65 per cent say he doesn't care about people like them and 49 per cent say he's dishonest. Anthony Wells, head of European political research at YouGov, said: 'Labour's problem is that despite their landslide victory last year there was never any great enthusiasm for them in the first place — people were voting against the Tories. So as they have made some unpopular decisions they have not had any goodwill in the bank to fall back on.' Yet concerns about whether Starmer can survive need a reality check — Labour does not have the same appetite for regicide as the Tories or the same mechanisms for removing a leader. Even his most ardent critics concede that there there is no obvious successor who is capable of uniting Starmer's fragmenting electoral coalition. Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, appeals to those on the left of the party but there are questions about whether she could command broader support. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has the same problem the other way — he can appeal to those in the centre but has more limited appeal to those on the left. The YouGov polling also shows that all the plausible Labour alternatives, including Rayner and Streeting, are seen as more likely to be worse than Starmer. The speculation about Starmer's future stems in part from the knowledge that things are likely to get much worse. As difficult as the first year has been, the challenges of the second will eclipse them — the biggest of which will be the budget. At the cabinet on Tuesday, before the week's calamitous events, Reeves sounded a warning to ministers. At that stage the government had only made a partial about turn on welfare, protecting all existing claimants at a cost of £2.5 billion. Reeves said the compromise came at a cost, and that money would need to be raised. She said the last budget, painful as it was with £40 billion worth of tax rises, represented the 'low-hanging fruit'. The next budget would be more challenging. The tax rises are likely to be big. The cost of the change in direction on welfare and winter fuel payments came to around £6 billion, but economists are much more concerned about the anaemic levels of economic growth and a potential downgrade in forecasts. Some put the figure that needs to be raised as high as £30 billion, which would require huge tax rises. Cabinet ministers privately acknowledge that the benefits U-turn means all options for raising tax are now on the table. That includes potentially breaking the manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT, although ministers are loath to do so. A tax raid on pension savings is also being considered. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, said it would be very hard for Labour to find the money necessary without touching those 'big three' taxes. 'I don't really think there is [a way of doing it],' he said. 'We don't really know what kind of levels of money the chancellor will need to find but if we are looking at £30 billion, which is quite plausible, I can't see a way in which she raises that kind of money without hitting people on middle incomes as they did with the national insurance increase.' One minister said that while they would prefer spending restraint over tax rises, they appear to be unavoidable. They said that all options would need to be considered. The Times has been told that the government will not reopen the spending review despite the scale of the gap in the public minister was philosophical. The reality was that on many occasions the government had to choose between 'bad choices or very bad choices'. That, at times, government is effectively a Sophie's choice, with no good options on the table.
Times
27 minutes ago
- Times
Britain's biggest fact-checking company goes into administration
Britain's biggest fact-checking company has gone into administration, The Times has learnt. Logically was born in the wake of the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit referendum. It once boasted 200 employees in the UK, India and America. Its founder, Lyric Jain, a Cambridge engineering graduate, said he was also motivated by the death of his paternal grandmother in India who died after being persuaded to abandon chemotherapy treatment in favour of a 'special juice'. He said his goal was 'tackling harmful and manipulative content at speed and scale' and 'bringing truth to the digital world, and making it a safer place for everyone everywhere'. Jain hails from a wealthy Indian family, whose home is a mansion in Staffordshire that once belonged to Admiral Sir John Jervis, a naval commander in the 18th century. The fact-checking industry is facing a backlash driven by President Trump's second administration, but former employees of Logically blame its demise on what they claim were strategic errors from the company's leadership. Logically did fact-checking for Meta and TikTok under the Logically Facts brand and also developed an AI software product that analysed social media posts for disinformation. Former staff point to a decision by the company to work for the controversial fact-checking unit of the Indian state government of Karnataka as a crucial misstep. The unit was criticised by the Editors Guild of India and other organisations who argued the system could be used to suppress dissent and free speech and threaten independent journalism. That contract led to the loss of its certification from International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), an industry body, which does not allow fact-checkers to be employed by state entities or political parties. Around that time Logically lost the Meta and TikTok contracts which were worth millions of pounds in revenue. Sources close to Logically suggest the loss of the social media contracts was for commercial reasons rather than certification. Logically also worked for the British government's Counter-Disinformation Unit during the Covid pandemic, attracting some controversy from free speech supporters. • Disinformation unit 'tried to stifle Covid lockdown critics' Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the IFCN, said of the Indian contract: 'They lost their certification in part because of that and also concerns about overall transparency. 'It wasn't clear what work was journalistic and what work was … private, for lack of a better word. We knew that they were doing some work advising governments, but it wasn't very clear what the nature of that work was or how it impacted their fact-checking operation. 'There was no allegation that they were doing anything wrong. But our code is about meeting very high standards.' Former staff said the company was keen to drop human-driven fact-checking in favour of an AI software product called Logically Intelligence. The product was hampered when social media companies like X cut off access to their data. Tech giants including Google, Meta and X have dropped or scaled back fact-checking services in recent month. After Trump's election, Meta scrapped its external fact-checkers on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, replacing them with a 'crowd-sourced' system like the one pioneered on social media site announced this week that AI would be writing fact-checking notes on its crowd-sourced system called Community Notes. Last week Google dropped a system called ClaimReview that allowed fact-checkers to promote accurate information on search Morris, chief executive of Full Fact, a British fact-checking charity, said: 'Google's decision to deprioritise fact-checks will make it harder for users to access accurate information designed to help them make informed choices. It's a disappointing decision from a company that has until very recently been a global fact-checking champion.'Google said the change was a 'minor clean-up' which 'affected a very small percentage of results'. Logically's assets have been transferred to another company called Kreatur under a pre-pack administration process. The main shareholder and director of Kreatur, Ashwin Kumaraswamy, is a former director and the original investor in Logically.A Kreatur spokesperson said: 'Kreatur Ltd has acquired Logically's core technology, brand and key assets as part of a pre-pack administration process. The transaction ensures continuity for all customers and preserves over 40 full-time roles.' Kumaraswamy was approached for comment.
