Berry's defection to Reform is the latest sign it is a joke party
Apropos of nothing, online swingometers now have Berry's former seat going to Reform by quite a healthy margin. In fairness to the voters of Rossendale and Darwen, they have obvious reasons to want to put a plague on the houses of both major parties – reasons that Berry sharply identified in his article announcing his defection. He was blunt: 'If you were deliberately trying to wreck the country, you'd be hard pressed to do a better job than the last two decades of Labour and Tory rule'.
Our streets are lawless, migration is out of control, and taxes are going through the roof. Britain is broken, it needs reform, and Nigel Farage is the man to deliver it – just as, erm, one assumes Tugendhat was last summer.
With Berry's defection, Reform gain a former MP with several years of ex-ministerial experience at a junior level – as Minister of State for the Northern Powerhouse (remember that?) – and over a decade in the Commons.
They get someone with considerable organisational experience, brio, and a suitably firm line on the culture wars. But it is hard to get too excited about Berry's switch. He is not a political heavyweight. His loss from the Commons was not mourned by many. And his post-parliamentary career has suggested little more than a desperate desire to remain relevant.
In Berry's defence, he has never been anything less than enthusiastic. He set up the party's Northern Research Group to support MPs in the North and Midlands – areas that deserted the party at the last election. He was vocal in trying to bridge the gap between the party leadership and its members, and in trying to reclaim a reputation for being the party of lower taxes that we never should have lost.
He swung back and forth on Rishi Sunak, depending on how much attention the former Prime Minister paid to him. But like so many, he will be forever devalued by his association with Truss.
Let me be plain. Berry's career has been a combination of shameless careerism with an unfortunate tendency to throw his toys out of the pram. Berry is one of those ex-Tory MPs – like fellow defector Andrea Jenkyns – who never got over the fact that the leaders they put so much stock in – Johnson, the 49-Day Queen, or both – were hopeless at the job.
He rated his political nous rather more than quite a few of his colleagues did; his knighthood was the latest depressing sign that the honours system is becoming a joke. His defection will generate a little heat, and no light.
I am far from being Kemi Badenoch's biggest fan. But the Tory leader and myself would both agree that Berry's defection is no great loss. If the choice was between having Berry sniping from the sidelines and descending into ever-greater irrelevance while still nominally a Conservative, or sniping from the sidelines and descending into ever-greater irrelevance as a Farage fanboy, the latter is much easier to handle.
When Reform have been taking Tory defectors, they have not been taking our best. Berry's defection is the latest sign that they are a joke party, populated by loudmouths and attention-seekers.
That they are leading in the polls is no accident. Berry is right to suggest that Britain is broken, that the public are fed up, and that radical change is needed. But someone so associated with the last fourteen years – and so tarnished by his indelible association with our worst ever Prime Minister – is hardly the man to deliver it.
Until you have current and former Tory MPs of genuine stature going teal – and I won't embarrass them here by naming names – it is hard to take Farage's motley crew seriously as a vehicle for fixing the country. Like Farage himself, Berry is yesterday's man.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
15 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Give grooming victims role in Islamophobia definition, suggests Badenoch
Grooming gang victims should help draft the Government's definition of Islamophobia, Kemi Badenoch has suggested. The Conservative Party leader has urged the Prime Minister to suspend the current 'secretive process' to draft the definition and introduce 'full public scrutiny'. She suggested such scrutiny would include adding representatives of victims of the grooming gangs, along with counter-terror experts and free speech activists, to the working group drawing up the definition. In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, seen by The Telegraph, Ms Badenoch said: 'Why has the Government refused to include counter-terror experts, free speech campaigners, and representatives of grooming gang victims in their working group?' She said the definition currently being drafted risked 'enabling a de facto blasphemy code' and letting 'fear of offence compromise national security'. Writing to Sir Keir on Friday, Ms Badenoch said: 'I urge the Government to suspend this process entirely, or at the very least ensure full public scrutiny by reopening the call for evidence, and publishing all the consultation responses and recommendations of the working group.' 'Establishing a definition of 'Islamophobia' will further hinder honest discussion of grooming gangs,' she claimed, adding that 'a definition that chills speech will only make it harder to confront Islamist extremism'. She argued 'the term 'Islamophobia' conflates criticism of ideas with hatred of people'. While the term 'anti-Muslim hatred' has been floated as an alternative title for the definition, Ms Badenoch also appeared to dismiss this in her letter to the Prime Minister. She wrote: 'Anti-Muslim hatred is focused on hatred of a people, and there are existing laws to protect against discrimination.' Though it is not clear which definition would be proposed by the panel, the Labour Party has formally adopted for internal purposes the definition of Islamophobia drafted by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims. Critics of the APPG definition point to one part which appears to state that using the phrase 'sex groomer' in relation to a person of Muslim background may be Islamophobic. Dominic Grieve, a former Tory MP and chairman of the working group drafting the Islamophobia definition, previously wrote the foreword to the APPG's 2018 report on its Islamophobia definition which included the apparent reference to grooming gangs. Ms Badenoch suggested an Islamophobia definition would make the country less secure. She wrote to Sir Keir: 'We must not let fear of offence compromise national security. Islamist extremism remains the UK's most lethal threat. Yet still, people are scared of causing offence.' Ms Badenoch warned Sir Keir that 'the panel is not impartial' and accused some of its leading members of 'minimising the role of Asian Muslim men in grooming gangs'. She went on to characterise the panel's work as a 'secretive process' and said 'it appears the process is predetermined'. Ms Badenoch has identities 'a disturbing trend in religiously motivated intimidation, from the case of the Batley Grammar School teacher still in hiding after being hounded out of his job by angry mobs, to violent threats against MPs, cinemas cancelling film screenings, and schoolboys suspended for dropping a copy of a Quran.' This week, a businesswoman who is helping to draw up the definition of Islamophobia for Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, has become embroiled in a conflict of interest row. Akeela Ahmed is one of five people on a working group advising Ms Rayner on the definition. On Monday, Ms Rayner's department announced that the British Muslim Trust – which Ms Ahmed is due to lead as chief executive – would receive up to £1 million a year to monitor incidents of Islamophobia and 'raise awareness' of hate crime.
Telegraph
15 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Mandelson ‘called Epstein my best pal'
Lord Mandelson called Jeffrey Epstein 'my best pal' in a birthday message, according to reports. The Labour grandee, Britain's ambassador to the United States, is alleged to have written the message for a birthday album put together for the paedophile financier's 50th birthday in 2003. Recent reports have rocked Washington amid claims that Donald Trump, the US president, and Bill Clinton, the former president, also sent letters for the album. Mr Trump fiercely denied the claims, while Mr Clinton has not commented. The letter from Lord Mandelson, in which he called Epstein 'my best pal', featured photographs of a tropical island and whiskey, according to The Wall Street Journal. The album is said to have been examined by the justice department when it investigated the paedophile, who was charged with sex trafficking in 2019 and later killed himself in his Manhattan prison cell. It marks an embarrassing development for Lord Mandelson both in the US, where high-profile figures are under pressure over their association with Epstein, and in Britain, where Sir Keir Starmer has previously been urged to sever ties with the ambassador over the relationship. A spokesman for Lord Mandelson declined to comment on the allegations. Dinner parties and shopping trips Epstein appeared to maintain a 'particularly close relationship' with Lord Mandelson, whom he affectionately referred to as 'Petie', according to court documents released two years ago. A 2002 New York Magazine article listed Lord Mandelson as a dinner-party guest at Epstein's Manhattan home, along with Mr Trump and Mr Clinton. Photographs have shown Lord Mandelson and Epstein shopping for clothes in the Caribbean in 2005, in which the former Cabinet minister tries on a white leather belt, and celebrating a birthday at the financier's Paris apartment in 2007. Earlier this year, Lord Mandelson claimed the media had an 'obsession' about his relationship with the paedophile. 'I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women,' he said. He added: 'I'm not going to go into this. It's an… obsession and frankly you can all f— off. Ok?' Mr Trump is under mounting pressure to release all the documents held by the US government on Epstein. So far, his administration has refused to do so despite calls for transparency by some of the president's closest allies, splitting his support base in the process. 'A pal is a wonderful thing' For the birthday album, Mr Trump reportedly sent a letter imagining a cryptic conversation with his then-friend in which he said they had 'certain things in common' and featured a drawing of a nude woman in permanent marker. Mr Trump also reportedly wrote 'enigmas never age' and ended the message with the words: 'A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.' The president has denied writing or sending the letter, and is suing The Wall Street Journal for defamation over the report. However, Mr Trump's name is listed among dozens of Epstein's acquaintances who were asked to contribute birthday messages for the album, The New York Times reported. A White House spokesman described the story as 'fake news'. Mr Clinton is said to have praised Epstein's 'childlike curiosity' in a birthday message to the paedophile in 2003. A spokesman declined to comment to the newspaper. Democrats in Congress have written to the Epstein estate's executors asking for an un-redacted copy of the album. Its existence and contents have not been independently verified by The Telegraph. Brad Edwards, a lawyer for hundreds of Epstein's victims, said on Thursday: 'I know the executors of the estate are in possession of that book.'
Times
15 minutes ago
- Times
16-year-olds will soon have the vote. How will they use it?
Sir Keir Starmer may have been named after the founder of the Labour Party but among his predecessors it is Harold Wilson he admires most. Like Starmer, Wilson was both a pragmatist and a progressive, famously declaring that 'he who rejects change is the architect of decay'. It is this shared ethos that explains best why Starmer intends to hand the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds; he is the first prime minister to extend the franchise since Wilson lowered the threshold from 21 to 18 in 1969. Starmer believes it is essential to restoring the 'social contract' with younger generations, whose needs and desires have been ignored by successive governments, and whose faith in democracy is lower than other age groups. He also sees it, fundamentally, as an issue of fairness. 'He's long believed that if you can serve [in the military], pay tax and reach adulthood in that parliament you should have a say,' a No 10 source said. 'Every time the franchise has been widened it has been bitterly opposed. Opponents are on the wrong side of history again this time around.' Similar arguments shaped the thinking of Wilson's administration decades ago, as the Swinging Sixties and the Mod subculture personified by rock bands like the Who gave rise to new ideas about the meaning of adulthood. Starmer's opponents see it differently, noting the trend in recent years has shifted towards raising legal age thresholds, be it getting a tattoo, remaining in full-time education or buying tobacco. Starmer, following in the footsteps of Rishi Sunak, is pushing through a generational ban on cigarettes for anyone born after 2009. Those nicotine-free teenagers are the same people he wants to empower at the next election. The UK is to join a handful of countries that have moved to voting at 16 for national elections, including Austria, Argentina and Brazil. As the veteran Labour commentator John Rentoul recently observed, the challenge for Starmer is 'to explain why voting is different from most other things, not why it is the same'. The fiercest attacks on Starmer come from the right: Nigel Farage has accused Labour of attempting to 'rig the system' and secure re-election on the back of a 'youthquake'. But to focus on this alone is to ignore a movement that first emerged 40 years ago, and which stretches far beyond the confines of Labour politics. In 1985, at a time of surging youth unemployment, drug use and crime, a fresh-faced Liberal Democrat MP sought to seize on the growing clamour for change. Aged 30, Jim Wallace, the member for Orkney & Shetland, put forward a youth charter bill to improve educational and work opportunities and to lower the voting age from 18. He argued young people could bring forward 'fresh ideas' and had put environmental issues on the agenda 'long before they gained political respectability'. Unlike the environmental movement, his bill failed to catch on. Wallace, who went on to lead the Scottish Lib Dems and served as both deputy and acting first minister of Scotland, now says that 'the lot fell on me' because he was the youngest Lib Dem in parliament. Nevertheless, the principle stuck with him and he remains, aged 70, a staunch supporter. While another three private member's bills failed in 1991, 1992 and 1999, the cause continued to rise up the political agenda and became a core policy for the Liberal Democrats. It has been in their manifesto since 1992. The SNP followed suit in 1997. The idea gained popular momentum in the early 2000s as dozens of youth and democracy organisations formed the Votes at 16 Coalition. It was around this time that a young Angela Rayner, a teenage mother who left school at 16, also began advocating to lower the voting age in her role as a Stockport branch secretary at Unison, the trade union. While the Electoral Commission advised against the move, by 2007 Gordon Brown was calling for it as prime minister. The Youth Citizenship Commission was established to try to reconnect Britain's disengaged youth with the political system. Among the new commissioners was Wes Streeting, who was president of the National Union of Students and is now health secretary. As the 2010 election neared, Labour's internal National Policy Forum had given its backing and Streeting, determined the policy should make the manifesto, directly appealed to the man Brown had tasked with writing it. 'The inclusion of votes at 16 in the next manifesto is a litmus test as to how seriously the leadership take the youth movement of the party,' he wrote in a blog post for the LabourList website. 'Ed Miliband: we're watching you.' Miliband delivered: Labour's manifesto promised MPs a free vote on the issue. Brown, however, did not, and the election of David Cameron's Conservatives doused the hopes of a generation of young activists. However, the election did prove Brown right in at least one respect: less than half of the 18 to 24-year-olds registered to vote actually did so. While the Tories had killed off the prospect of UK-wide change, in Scotland the genie was already out of the bottle. At the instigation of Alex Salmond as first minister, 16-year-olds were allowed to vote on Scottish independence at the 2014 referendum. More than 100,000 of them voted and at least half chose independence. Sixteen and 17-year-olds gained the right to vote in Scottish parliamentary and local government elections in 2016, and Wales followed suit in 2020. While low turnout among young voters is frequently raised as a reason not to extend the franchise, Wallace believes Scotland has shown the opposite to be true. 'The turnout of 16 to 17-year-olds was better than the next tranche of 18 to 24-year-olds in 2014,' he noted, citing an analysis by the Electoral Commission, which put the figures at 75 per cent versus 54 per cent. The habit stuck. In 2023 research at the University of Edinburgh found these young Scots had 'continued to turn out [at subsequent elections] in higher numbers, even into their twenties, than young people who attained the right to vote later, at age 18'. Wallace believes this is partly explained by the flurry of educational activity around the Scottish referendum, with 'almost every second school holding a hustings'. He added: 'It confirms something that I have felt for a long time, which is that the reason why people don't vote is they don't know what it's about. I think just the act of going into a polling station is alien to some people. You have to strip away some of the mystique around it.' Similar trends have been found in Austria, where turnout among 16 and 17-year-olds roughly matches other age groups. By the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016, the principle of votes at 16 had become widely accepted in Labour. Miliband and later Jeremy Corbyn were firmly committed to it during their leaderships. After the vote to leave the EU, the argument deployed by Remainers, that 1.5 million ineligible teenagers had been robbed of their future, merely entrenched the belief among senior Europhiles that it was time for change. Many, like Rayner and Streeting, would go on to take seats around Starmer's cabinet table. With the policy now set, the question is whether this new cohort of voters will alter the course of the next election. They number 1.5 million, increasing the size of the franchise by 3 per cent, but large enough to prove decisive in a tight contest. According to an analysis by The Sunday Times, there are 114 constituencies where the size of the incumbent MP's majority is smaller than the number of 16 and 17-year-olds living there: Increasingly, age, rather than class or gender, is proving the key social divide in Britain — and it is certainly true that under Corbyn, these younger voters flocked to Labour in 2017. But those assumptions can no longer be made. Labour's majority is increasingly under threat from progressive parties such as the Greens, Lib Dems and Corbyn's new, as yet unnamed alternative. It is no longer a given that the youth votes left, if recent European elections are anything to go by. When Germany gave 16-year-olds the vote before last year's European parliament elections, the populist left and right increased their vote. Sixteen per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds voted for the hard-right AfD. There was a similar pattern in France, where 31 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds backed the left-wing France Unbowed at last year's European election and 26 per cent backed Marine Le Pen's hard-right National Rally. President Macron's Renaissance party got 8 per cent. Here in Britain, Reform has made a concerted effort to win over millennials and Gen Z. Farage's presence on TikTok, where these voters increasingly get their news, far surpasses his Labour and Tory rivals. In Warwickshire, where Reform won the largest number of seats in May's local elections, George Finch, a 19-year-old politics student at Leicester University, is now the leader of the county council. Reform holds a commanding lead in all-age opinion polls, but surveys by the think tank More in Common consistently show younger voters are still more drawn to Labour and the Greens. This is true even among young men, although they are voting for the populist right in unprecedented numbers. There are also signs that, despite Scotland's success, apathy among the young remains high. In a recent poll by Merlin Strategy, 49 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds said they did not want the vote before 18. Only 18 per cent were sure they would vote if there were an election tomorrow. • Daniel Finkelstein: Opposing votes at 16 would cost Tories dear With so many variables, the change seems likely to have a negligible impact. According to Wendy Chamberlain, a Lib Dem MP who previously co-chaired the Votes at 16 all-party parliamentary group, the only certainty in politics now is 'the volatility of the electorate, regardless of their age or other social demographics'. The bigger problem for Starmer is the perception of other voters. More in Common's polling found 70 per cent shared Farage's view that Labour was seeking electoral advantage, and votes at 16 were opposed by 48 per cent to 27 per cent. Luke Tryl, the think tank's director, says the issue ranks well below the public's top priorities. For Wallace, these are challenges not to resile from but to confront head-on. 'It's a reason to get your argument across to young people, to try and win their vote,' he said. 'Whether it's higher education, better training and apprenticeships, the environment, young people are right to be demanding more.' Additional reporting by Dominic Hauschild
