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New Statesman
3 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
A year of crisis and political fragmentation
Photo byOne year ago today, people across the UK went to the polls and overwhelmingly voted for change. When the exit poll landed at 10pm it showed Keir Starmer's Labour party on track for a three-figure majority – and right on cue the New Labour anthem 'Things Can Only Get Better' began playing at the New Statesman election night party. The following morning, Keir Starmer stood outside the door of No 10 Downing Street (despite the common misconception, there aren't actually any steps), and promised a new type of politics to 'end the era of noisy performance, tread more lightly on your lives, and unite our country'. Well, here we are. The media is awash today with reflections on how the last year has gone for the Prime Minister. You can read one of them, in which David Edgerton argues that Keir Starmer's government does not represent the true Labour Party, on the New Statesman website today. You can also listen to our special anniversary episode of the New Statesman podcast with Anoosh Chakelian, Tom McTague, Andrew Marr and me, where we try to unpack quite what has happened – and where it could go next. So instead of rehashing all of that, I thought we could zoom out and look at some of the other things the election and subsequent 12 months have taught us. British politics is fracturing in all directions. First-past-the-post and Labour's huge (though not unsurpassable, as we saw with the welfare cuts rebellion) majority masked an electoral landscape that more closely resembles multi-party European politics. The Electoral Reform Society (whose chief executive I interviewed in May) has calculated the parliament we ended up with was the least representative ever in terms of how people actually voted. The 2024 result was the first time four parties had received over 10 per cent of the vote: Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Reform. In the May local elections, that went up to five with the addition of the Greens. The latest YouGov poll, conducted just ahead of the election anniversary, has both Reform and the combination of the Lib Dems and Greens on 26 per cent each. That's a Brexit-referendum majority opting for someone other than the two main parties. Those two parties, meanwhile, are languishing around the 40 per cent combined mark: Labour on 24 per cent and the Conservatives on 17 per cent. It would take too long to list all the things they've both done to deserve that (please see previous Morning Call emails over the past, say, five years) but the point is they're down together – following an election that gave them the lowest joint vote share in history at 57.4 per cent. That's new: for 50 years the combined Tory and Labour vote would be a number in the high 70s. This seems to have caught both parties off-guard. Last week I chaired an event at the Mile End Institute entitled 'Does the Conservative Party have a future?' (a question to which no one felt too confident about). Politics lecturer Dr Nigel Fletcher, an expert in the history of oppositions, borrowed an analogy from Game of Thrones: a wheel that sees the great families cycle up and down, some rising while others fall. Dragon-wielding Daenerys Targaryen is determined not to stop the wheel, but to break it. This is, Fletcher argued, essentially what Nigel Farage and Reform are trying to do, breaking the cycle whereby the fall of Labour automatically leads to the rise of the Tories, and vice versa. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The Conservatives' recovery from what they thought was their electoral nadir last July (until it transpired their poll ratings could actually drop further) has, in a strange way, been hampered by a misconception that Labour's sharp fall in popularity would help them by default. It hasn't. All it has done is fuel the narrative that both establishment parties are falling short and thrown Kemi Badenoch's failure to begin repairing her party's fortunes into starker relief. Similarly, many Labour figures assumed one year ago that however difficult the political and economic situation they were inheriting, they could be reassured by the toxicity of their main opponents. Labour could afford to make some early mistakes, because the Tories would be in no position to take advantage of them. What they didn't count on was fringe parties muscling in to suck up disaffected supporters. In a shock move last night, left-wing MP Zarah Sultana, who has had the Labour whip suspended since last July, announced she was quitting Labour and setting up her own party with Jeremy Corbyn to challenge Starmer from the left. Corbyn himself has been suspiciously quiet about Sultana's announcement so far – although he did spend this week hinting about some kind of new movement to bring together left-wing independents. Even before all of that, though, data suggests nearly three times as many 2024 Labour voters are moving to the Lib Dems or the Greens than are eyeing up Reform. But the geographical distribution of the election win (think of the sandcastle analogy) means both left and right defectors pose a serious challenge. They squeeze Starmer in two directions, leaving him trapped. Rishi Sunak would sympathise. What does this mean going into year two of this parliament? In short, things are going to get bumpy. For the first time ever, Nigel Farage is being seriously talked about as a future prime minister (including, in this week's New Statesman magazine, by Andrew Marr). The Greens are holding a leadership over the summer and could select an eco-populist to galvanise the left, or an insurgent Corbyn-led movement could yet emerge. The Lib Dems have set their sights on eating further into what the Tories used to consider their heartlands – if it doesn't get eaten by Reform first. Elections in Scotland and Wales in 2026 look set to become contests of who the electorate hates and fears the least. Wednesday's bond market wobble and subsequent Rachel Reeves love-in means it looks less likely we'll have a new Chancellor than it did last week, but it's pretty inevitable we'll get a new front bench – and quite possibly a new opposition leader too, if the Tories' 'extinction-level territory' polling situation doesn't improve. Who knows, we may even have a serious debate about electoral reform and whether first-past-the-post still works in a landscape like this. In other words, politics isn't going to get quieter. Sorry to disappoint. This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here [See also: The bond market has rescued Rachel Reeves from Keir Starmer] Related
Scotsman
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
14 memorable photos telling story of the 90s, from Britpop to cyber pets craze
4 . New Labour's landslide victory Tony Blair's New Labour stormed to a huge victory in May 1997, to the soundtrack of D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better, ending 18 years of Tory rule. Blair presided over the flag-waving era of Cool Britannia, modelling himself as a man of the people and courting celebrities including Noel Gallagher. He was hugely popular at first and remained in the hot seat for 10 years, but his legacy was tarnished in many people's eyes by the Iraq war. | JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP via Getty Images Photo: JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP via Getty Images
ABC News
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Antony Green on Take 5: Meet the music-lover behind the numbers
Millions of Australians know Antony Green AO as "that election guy", "the number cruncher" or maybe even by his official title, ABC's chief election analyst. But after more than 30 years, Green is Over that time, he's become one of the ABC's most trusted on-air figures, respected by the public and politicians alike for his impartiality, attention to detail and ability to interpret real-time data and translate it into accurate electoral predictions. Photo shows A drawn hand touching a record on a bright orange background with 'take 5' in white large letters over the top Green has An avid-music lover, Green is, perhaps unsurprisingly, full of trivia, facts and anecdotes about music history and the stories behind his picks — which include tracks from rock bands Traffic and The Pretenders, as well as a solo track from Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley, an early cut from Simple Minds and inescapable 90s hit 'Things Can Only Get Better'. "I do dig back [now]," he says. "I'm one of those people who knows every bit of detail of the Beatles records and 60s stuff, who was in what band. That sort of stuff interests me." Antony Green's Take 5 songs: Traffic — The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys The Pretenders — Up the Neck Pete Shelley — Telephone Operator Simple Minds — I Travel D:Ream — Things Can Only Get Better He's also fascinated by the technical elements of music as much as its end sound, whether that be Pete Shelley's electronic turn post-Buzzcocks, what he calls the "Dusseldorf doof doof" of Kraftwerk, or simply the process of tuning a piano. "Two of my regrets in life: one, not learning [another] language, and two, not learning any musical instruments," Green says. "I go on YouTube and watch people explain why this song works, or that song works. Why does this key change really sound fantastic to the ear? That sort of stuff fascinates me." He does admit that his taste tapers off after 1990, though down-tempo French duo Air are an exception. "That's just an age thing," he says. Loading YouTube content A life-long love affair with music Green arrived at Take 5 with his credentials at the ready — rocking an original 'exploding heads' jumper from triple j's launch in 1981. "Because it's covered with all these lines all over the place, it was a great thing to wear if you had to clean the bathroom or paint," he laughs. "It still fits, yes." Green also remembers listening to Double J's Loading YouTube content "It was a couple of years later I became a more regular listener," he says. "There was lots of the comedy stuff in the morning, which I didn't always get. It was But he credits the station with helping him broaden his tastes — though he leans towards the Euro-disco, New Wave sound. "I'm always taken by a track which has got a rhythm," he says. Photo shows ABC election analyst Antony Green Election The ABC's election guru reflects on the past 36 years at the national broadcaster in the final days before covering his last big poll on-air. Does this mean Green was clubbing back in the day? "No, I wouldn't have gone to many dance parties over the years," he says. "I think the last one I went to was somewhere in London in about 1996… Dannii Minogue sang and Kylie Minogue was presenting or something, and I [was] thinking, 'Why am I here?' "I'm from that era before everyone just got into a groove and you had this beat going, and people would mix tracks in and out. My partying time was before that; you might actually stop between songs. They wouldn't necessarily try and mix them together in the same way that became so popular." Loading YouTube content Nowadays, Green says listening to music — albums in full — is one way he relaxes. Another is cycling. He has multi-week rides through Southern Portugal and Andalusia in Spain planned for later this year. And on Saturday night, after he calls the election, there's no rest or Dusseldorf doof doof planned. "I might have one drink," he says. "I'll be very boring for the party afterwards." Take 5 with Zan Rowe airs each Friday at 10am, with new podcast episodes each Friday morning.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Stop Brexit man' cleared over noisy protest
An anti-Brexit activist has been cleared of breaching a police ban after playing music on loudspeakers at a protest outside Parliament in London. Steve Bray, 56, faced trial over the incident on Parliament Square, which took place before then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was questioned by MPs in the House of Commons on 20 March last year. Mr Bray, known as "Stop Brexit man", denied the charge and had previously told the court playing music was part of his "fundamental right to protest". On Monday, Mr Bray was found not guilty of failing to follow a police order, in a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court. Handing down his judgement, Deputy District Judge Anthony Woodcock said of Mr Bray: "He admitted that he is 'anti-Tory', which is his words. "He believes his is an important message to disseminate. He needs the volume that he uses the get the message across from Parliament Street to the Palace of Westminster." The defendant, from Port Talbot, south Wales, looked up to the public gallery and was given a thumbs up by one of his supporters following the verdict. Speaking outside the court after the verdict, Mr Bray said: "Today is a very important day, not just for us as protesters, but for everybody's freedom of expression. "Whatever your protest is, this is a victory for you." When asked whether he would continue to play music at protests outside Parliament, the activist said he planned to "carry on as we are". Mr Bray is known for playing loud music at protests in Westminster, including D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better at the gates of Downing Street when Sunak announced the general election in the pouring rain last May. Police approached Mr Bray at about 11:20 on 20 March last year, minutes before Sunak arrived ahead of Prime Minister's Questions. Mr Bray had been playing edits of the Muppets and Darth Vader themes on his speakers. The songs were used "as the prime minister came in, which is what we always did for Rishi - apparently he's a Star Wars fan", the activist told the court. Officers handed him a map and a notice that warned him he was prohibited from playing the speakers in the controlled area under a by-law, the court heard. The court heard the music resumed intermittently and shortly after 12:33, officers seized the speakers. Mr Bray had been accused of failing without reasonable excuse to comply with a direction given under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 "re prohibited activities in Parliament Square". His trial previously heard Mr Bray had told police their map, illustrating where he could not use the speakers, was incorrect. Body-worn footage featured Mr Bray, wearing a yellow and blue top hat, repeatedly telling police "you've got the wrong map". He said it was outdated and officers would learn that by asking someone higher up in the chain of command. When told he was not allowed to play the music there, Mr Bray stuck his fingers in his ears and said: "No it's not, it's not, not here - it's not wrong here", the court heard. "I know what I can't do", he said, suggesting officers stick it "where the sun don't shine" before lighting a cigarette and looking away. Several witnesses described to the court the negative impact of Mr Bray's music, heard as high as the sixth floor in nearby buildings. After hearing this, Mr Bray apologised at an earlier court hearing.
The Independent
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Britain's 'Stop Brexit Man' acquitted by judge over his musical protests outside Parliament
An anti- Brexit activist who has spent years mounting a one-man protest outside Britain's Parliament won a court victory on Monday against a police attempt to pull the plug on his musical activities. A judge in London cleared Steve Bray, known as 'Stop Brexit Man,' of failing to comply with a police order to stop playing amplified music in Parliament Square on March 20, 2024. Bray, 56, came to prominence in the years after Britain 's 2016 vote to leave the European Union by bellowing 'Stop Brexit' near television reporters during live broadcasts while wearing a top hat in the blue and yellow of the EU flag. More recently he has taken to playing satirically tinged songs before Parliament's weekly Prime Minister's Questions session, including the theme from 'The Muppet Show' and Darth Vader's theme from 'Star Wars.' He blasted 'Things Can Only Get Better' outside 10 Downing St. while then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called an election in May 2024. Bray, who represented himself during his trial, argued that the music was part of his 'fundamental right to protest,' and Deputy District Judge Anthony Woodcock agreed. Handing down a not-guilty verdict at Westminster Magistrates' Court, the judge said Bray believes he has 'an important message to disseminate.' 'How he chooses to express those views is a matter for him,' the judge said, noting that 'lampooning the government through satire is a long tradition in this country.' After the verdict, Bray said that 'today is a very important day, not just for us as protesters, but for everybody's freedom of expression and their right to protest.' 'Regardless what side of the fence you're on, whatever your protest is, this is a victory for you,' he said.
