Reform's momentum is making the political weather
Reform are particularly delighted that Sir Jake has not just defected but done so by going "studs in" on his former party, as one source put it."For us this is really crucial. If you want to join us you need to be really going for the other side when you do. Drawing a proper line in the sand," they added.They regard Sir Jake's closeness to Boris Johnson as "dagger-in-the-heart stuff" for the Conservatives.But perhaps the more interesting and consequential pivot in strategy we are currently witnessing is Labour's approach to Reform.At the very highest level in government they are reshaping their approach: turning their attention away from their principal opponent of the last century and more, the Conservatives, and tilting instead towards Nigel Farage's party.Again, extraordinary.It tells you a lot about our contemporary politics that a party with Labour's history, sitting on top of a colossal Commons majority, is now shifting its focus to a party with just a handful of MPs.Senior ministers take the rise of Reform incredibly seriously and are not dismissing them as a flash in the pan insurgency.After all, Reform's lead in many opinion polls has proven to be sustained in recent months and was then garnished with their impressive performance in the English local elections in May and their win, on the same day, in the parliamentary by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in Cheshire.If Labour folk then were still in need of the jolt of a wake-up call, that night provided it.In their immediate response to Sir Jake's defection, Labour are pointing to Reform recruiting Liz Truss's party chairman and so are inheriting, they claim, her "reckless economics".But they know the challenge of taking on and, they hope, defeating Reform, will be work of years of slog and will have to be grounded in proving they can deliver in government – not easy, as their first year in office has so often proven.Not for the first time in recent months, Reform UK have momentum and are making the political weather.
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BBC News
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What would a regional mayor mean for Norfolk and Suffolk?
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Telegraph
25 minutes ago
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Unite's doing an astounding PR job for Reform
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New Statesman
an hour ago
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The mutation of jihad
Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP We fear the wrong terror. This week marked the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings. But the spectacular terror of international jihad has significantly abated. In 2022, the UK downgraded its terrorism threat level from 'severe' to 'substantial', and MI5 director Ken McCallum observed in 2024 that terrorist threats had diminished during his time at the service. Attacks claimed by Islamic State group (IS) have fallen from almost 4,000 in 2018 to around 600 so far this year. And they are less likely to be of immediate concern to Western countries. Almost 90% of the group's violence now takes place in remote parts of Africa. A report published this week highlighted a newer danger: hostile governments are equipping themselves to execute professional attacks on British soil. The study by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, which Keir Starmer saw before publication, investigated Iran. 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Historian Djene Rhys Bajalan has coined the term 'Salafi Neoliberalism' to describe the strange new synthesis of 'malls and mosques'. Other media outlets have described it as 'Islamist technocracy', pointing to the equal centrality of technocratic institutions and conservative social mores. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Before Syria, there was Afghanistan. Despite being spurned by the international community for its deeply regressive social policies, hardcore jihadists had condemned the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan after its 2021 takeover as too lax. IS's local wing and its affiliated media regularly scorn the Taliban, holding that the group has abandoned jihad, failed to implement Sharia and allied itself with enemy foreign powers. Accepting national borders and engaging in diplomacy is considered anathema to IS's vision of global jihad. Taken as evidence of ideological compromise was the Taliban's removal from Russia's list of terrorist organisations. And this week, on 9 July, Afghanistan posted an extraordinary tourism advert online, which opens with a shot of five turbaned men behind three kneeling hostages. The leader says 'we have one message for America', then pulls off the hood of the central hostage, revealing a beaming Westerner who shouts, 'Welcome to Afghanistan!' Of course, all sorts of propaganda will be used in service of attracting tourism; but this is nonetheless a sea change from the autarkic Taliban regime of the 1990s. Affiliates of al-Qaeda now appear poised to make a definitive break with the transnational jihadist model most infamously espoused by Islamic State (IS). Al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen (AQAP) and Somalia (Al-Shabaab) have showed signs of being willing to collaborate with the Iran-backed Houthis, traditionally an ideological foe. 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Burkina Faso's military junta plainly considers the Taliban and JNIM entirely separate entities, meeting with the former in May while engaged in a bloody war with the latter. What is left of IS itself has blamed the West for the move away from jihadism and toward more palatable alternatives in order to undermine them and lure Muslims from the 'true' path. One high-profile IS supporter posted on Facebook, '[the US] gave Afghanistan to Taliban… and Syria to [al-Sharaa's] HTS which converted to secularism'. Devoted IS supporters see more pragmatic Islamist movements like HTS as enforcers of the West's war on terrorism who are beholden to Western interests, rather than being committed to applying Shariah by the letter. Al-Naba, IS's weekly newspaper, has recently struck a downbeat tone. An early July editorial worried about low morale and a wavering commitment to global jihad. Several other recent editorials have all but admitted that the group is on the backfoot, especially in its Middle Eastern heartlands, where its attacks have dropped significantly in recent years. Transnational jihadism – an ideology that has demonstrated remarkable tenacity throughout the first quarter of the 21st century – may be about to turn a corner. As US power retreats, those who might have been attracted to confronting American imperialism are concerned by other questions. International terrorist imperatives are being subordinated to domestic, material issues. At least for now, the success of the local appears to be global jihadism's loss. [See also: Netanyahu bends the knee for Trump] Related
