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Daily Mail
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Rod Stewart urges voters to 'give Nigel Farage a chance' as he reveals what he really thinks about Keir Starmer
Rod Stewart has urged voters to give Nigel Farage a chance as he criticised both Sir Keir Starmer and the Conservatives. The singer, who is well known for hits such as Baby Jane and Maggie May, said he thinks the Reform UK leader is coming across well. Meanwhile, Sir Rod, 80, was critical of the Prime Minister's decision to cut off fishing in Scotland and give it back to the EU, saying this move has not made him popular. He also thinks the nation is fed up of the Tories. The rock legend told The Times: 'We've got to give Farage a chance. He's coming across well. Nigel? 'What options have we got? I know some of his family, I know his brother, and I quite like him.' Sir Rod, who is due to sing at Glastonbury on Sunday, explained that he doesn't think he is out of touch with ordinary people, even though he his 'extremely wealthy'. His comments on the UK's political landscape come after he previously spoke about about a problem with potholes around his £4.6million Essex mansion. In 2022, he delighted fans as he donned a high-vis jacket to fill in the craters outside his home. Sir Rod had said he was driven to take action 'as no-one can be bothered to do it'. The issue, however, continued to persist even after the local council said it would re-lay the road to fix the issues with the surface. And last November, he announced he was considering selling his Italian supercar collection over the pothole issue. Sir Rod wrote in a post on Instagram: 'I am extremely fortunate and eternally grateful to be the owner of these five beautiful hybrid sports cars, which, in my opinion, are true "works of art". 'Unfortunately, because of the potholes on our roads, I may have to find new owners for them. 'I've been driving these iconic Italian cars since the seventies, and I absolutely love and adore them.' Sir Rod was also quick to nip any criticism of his broadside in the bud. He added: 'This post is for my fans—thank you, as you are the sole reason I own them. And to all the trolls… don't bother; I never read the comments.' Sir Rod is due to perform at Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset on Sunday. The legend who has not sung at the event since 2002, confirmed that his Faces co-star and Rolling Stones guitarist, Ronnie Wood, will be making an appearance.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Starmer has failed at the first political hurdle
Next week marks the first anniversary of Labour's 2024 election victory. At the time, many commentators called it 'historic'. Even if Labour's winning vote – both in numbers and percentage – was one of the lowest in modern times, the party's parliamentary majority of 174 was indeed among the largest ever. A year on, however, and it is difficult to point to a single achievement for future historians to compare with those of the Attlee, Wilson or Blair administrations. In fact, the conviction is hardening, even among Sir Keir Starmer's loyalists, that the party's first year in office has been wasted. Even worse, the Prime Minister gives the impression of a man who has lost his way. His policies, strategy and tactics swing about wildly, almost from day to day. Last month he talked tough on migration, setting his face against allowing Britain to become 'an island of strangers'. Yesterday, he confessed in an interview that had no idea that his most memorable phrase was an echo of the jeremiads of Enoch Powell: ' I deeply regret using it.' It has been a similar story across the board: a prime minister who appeals to the public one minute and then protests that he did not mean a word of it. Or who claims to be unshakeable until the polls persuade him to ditch his policy and his comrades. Notoriously, he changed sides on transgender and other culture war issues. This month alone, he has U-turned on grooming gangs, by conceding a national inquiry, and on winter fuel payments. At first he backed Israel, but only until it became inconvenient to do so. On Iran, his position is so muddled that his own ministers are reduced to speechlessness. His tergiversations on foreign affairs have prompted the US and other allies to leave us in the dark at a crucial time. But the most obvious case in point is welfare. If a Labour prime minister with a large majority cannot reform welfare, what is the point of him? Having initially promised to get a grip on the ballooning cost of disability and sickness benefits, Sir Keir backed what was trumpeted as a 'welfare reform', though in truth it was merely a modest package of cuts. Even this feeble attempt to slow the rate of increase, however, was enough to provoke cries of betrayal from the massed ranks of the Parliamentary Labour Party. After over 120 backbenchers had threatened to rebel when the Bill returns to the Commons next Tuesday, the Prime Minister lost his nerve. After days of disarray, with briefings flying in all directions, he finally caved in, watered down the Bill and mortgaged his own political future to the rebels. The net effect of Sir Keir's concessions is to reduce the promised savings by some estimates by more than half, from about £5 billion by 2030 to perhaps just £2 billion. The balance will have to be found from higher taxes, more borrowing or both. But these numbers are merely a fraction of the sums that Rachel Reeves will have to find in her next Budget, just a few months from now. At the Nato summit, the Prime Minister was bounced into a pledge to raise defence spending at a faster rate than at any time since the Cold War. Yet at present, we are spending more on sickness and disability benefits (£65 billion) than on defence (£57 billion). Next week the 10 Year Health Plan will put the focus back on the NHS, on which spending has risen rapidly without reducing waiting lists significantly. Despite (or because of) inflation-busting deals to end the strikes, doctors are still demanding huge pay rises. Meanwhile the economy is crippled by the effects of another Starmer U-turn: the hike in employers' National Insurance contributions, breaking a solemn manifesto promise. Together with the extension of inheritance tax to farmers, family businesses and pensions, this is blighting the prospect of serious growth. The middle classes are squeezed by the effects of fiscal drag, with seven million people now paying higher rate income tax, and by VAT on school fees. Not only has this been a wasted year, but Labour's legacy threatens to turn Britain into a wasteland. It was Sir Keir Starmer's duty to tackle welfare, as only a man of the Left could. He has failed. The rest is silence.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Badenoch punctures the sanctimony of Starmer the statesman
Making 'a rare visit to the UK', the Prime Minister dropped by the Commons to deliver a statement on his adventures in Canada and The Hague. Fatty arrived to trumpets, on an elephant – the poor creature buckling under the weight – only to find the Chamber half empty. Whips texted MPs to say 'please support Keir', but the Joshes and the Tamsins were washing their hair. Never mind the war with Iran. They're angry at his war on benefits. His voice echoing around the room, Starmer described the critical role he had played at the G7 and Nato (picking up papers and holding open doors) and reminded us of Nato's indispensability. He skipped over the revelation that Mark Rutte calls Trump 'daddy' (their safe word is 'Fordow') or that the F-35A fighters he's buying with green shield stamps can only be operated at America's whim. Under Keir's leadership, Our Armed Forces are 'more lethal' than ever – yippee – and so, following the assisted dying vote, is Our NHS. He sat down triumphantly, fighting the diplomat's instinct to head straight for the buffet. Up popped Kemi Badenoch. Holy Moses, she was good. I want to pay tribute to her designer – green skirt, white top, fun necklace – but also whatever Conservative adviser said: 'Just be yourself, love, because the public can't stand the rest of us. 'He has evaded PMQs for two weeks,' she observed, 'only to come back here and tell us what we already have heard on the news.' Bingo. Starmer hadn't known whether to back Israel or oppose it. The Chagos deal proves Britain is weaker. He can't even command his own troops over welfare. Referencing Lord Hermer's Lefty advice and the Foreign Secretary's ambiguity over Iran, she quipped: 'What we need is a leader, instead we have three lawyers.' The PM was appalled; as were the Tory dinosaurs; as were the Lib Dems (now operating as a regional branch of the Labour Party). Is Kemi suggesting, asked crawly Ed Davey, that the PM shouldn't have attended the G7 or Nato, just so that he could do PMQs on a Wednesday? The point was facile: the PM could have moved his Qs to another day, I'm sure the Speaker would accommodate. But Davey found Badenoch's speech 'astonishing' and Starmer said it was 'unserious'. Mediocrities, you see, are always earnest. Inspector Clouseau never told a joke. People who don't know what they're doing, or are always screwing up, have to demand seriousness or else we'd be forever laughing at them. Starmer could stand at the despatch box with his trousers around his ankles and his hair on fire, and he'd say: 'I don't know why she's laughing.' Well, I was. Like a drain. Once Kemi had punctured the sanctimony of what was supposed to be a statesman's address, there was no recovering, and many of the Labour MPs who had bothered to attend slunk off for a choc ice. This left Davey and Starmer to make love across the floor, buttering each other's egos. 'Last week,' said Davey, 'I travelled to Estonia to meet British troops.' Why? More pointless foreign travel. What Our Troops made of a Lib Dem zip-lining into Tallinn dressed as Paddington with a Union Jack flying out his bottom, I can't imagine – though one trusts they took it seriously.
Sky News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News
Who will take the fall for welfare chaos?
👉Listen to Politics At Sam And Anne's on your podcast app👈 Sky News' Sam Coates and Politico's Anne McElvoy serve up their essential guide to the day in British politics. In a statement sent to Sam overnight, the government admits that concessions are on their way after an internal struggle over welfare reforms inside the Labour Party. It seems like meaningful talks are under way. Next Tuesday - the day of a supposed crunch vote on disability cuts that could have seen the government lose a vote - could now be just "the start". As Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to row back on savings, how much of the £5bn she wanted to save will she forgo? And why does this government always seem to be U-turning?
Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Times
A year after landslide, poll makes grim reading for Starmer
First the caveats. This is just one poll, albeit a large one. And a poll is just a snapshot of current opinion. With an election still four years off much can, and probably will, change. Yet as Sir Keir Starmer marks one year in power next week, he might well reflect on two things that YouGov's findings highlight. • Reform would be largest party if general election held today The first is obvious: how quickly his party has squandered the support it won in its landslide election victory. But the second is more important: how utterly fragmented Britain's political landscape has become. Here, it is worth a thought experiment. Imagine for a moment it is 2029 and the results of the general election mirror YouGov's poll. Reform might be the largest party but it is still 55 seats short of an overall majority. The party's best option would be to try to do a deal with the Conservatives, but would the Tories really want to go into power with Nigel Farage as prime minister and a cabinet in which the vast majority had never been MPs before, let alone ministers? They might wisely decide to sit it out in the hope of an implosion and an equally improbable swing of the electoral pendulum back to them. But even if they did agree to prop up Farage, the two parties together would still only have 317 MPs, the same number of seats which the Conservatives alone won under Theresa May back in 2017 — only this time there are not currently enough Democratic Unionist MPs to get them over the magic 326 threshold in the Commons. Farage might be in Downing Street but he would be on shakier ground than any prime minister in modern political history. • Fraser Nelson essay: Prime Minister Farage was once unthinkable — not any more The picture on the left is bleaker still. Even a rainbow coalition of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Welsh and Scottish nationalists would not be enough to sustain a government majority. To achieve that, the rump of the Tories would have to throw their weight behind Starmer in a German-style coalition. In short, it is hard to see a plausible and sustainable government of any kind being formed given where public opinion is at the moment. Supporters of Britain's first-past-the-post system have long argued that its principal benefit, compared with proportional systems widely used on the Continent, is that while it might be unfair, it does at least tend to produce stable governments. This poll, and the fragmentation of politics that it shows, demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case. Britain could become just as ungovernable as other countries we used to like to joke about.
