Writing the summary…
An arrest, a defection and a new leader - how Reform's 'challenging' week unfolded
Source: BBC Politics
Original reporting
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Don’t discount Reform because it's had a bad year. In our angry, fragile democracy, anything can happen | John Harris
Nigel Farage’s tactics are to play up the anxiety and resentment that people feel. Labour’s job is simple: to offer hope and change Despite the energised start Andy Burnham has made as prime minister, plenty of his party’s MPs and hardcore activists are still haunted by a familiar sense of insecurity. Underpinned by a political version of impostor syndrome, it runs deep – and, bar the odd spell of Labour optimism, it always has. So it is with the battle between Labour and Reform UK that will define an election that could arrive much sooner than some people think, and a widely held ambivalence on the left about the possibility of Nigel Farage’s party taking power. Reform is apparently in deep trouble, yet also still in with a serious chance. How come? Investigations into the party and its leadership’s finances by both the Metropolitan police and parliament’s standards commissioner may wor
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The Guardian
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Leader says party ‘won’t give up the fight’ to defeat ‘nasty populism’ in first-day speech to delegates in Brighton The Liberal Democrats’ leader, Sir Ed Davey, took aim at Nigel Farage and Elon Musk on the first day of his party’s annual conference, saying Lib Dems would not give up the fight to defeat “nasty populism” and Reform UK’s “£72m arsenal of hate and lies”. On stage at Brighton Centre, Davey called on the assembled delegates not to be deterred in the face of Reform’s hope “that the anger and the hatred and the lies will grind us down until eventually we just give up”. Continue reading...