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UK politics Q&A, as it happened: Andrew Sparrow answers your questions on Starmer, Reform and more | Politics
Key events
Afternoon summary
Thank you for the questions everone. Happy Easter.
I’m onto quickfire now before wrapping up.
Q&A: @Andrew, do you think there might be a leadership challenge if the results in May are as dire for Labour as many are predicting?
My colleagues who spend time talking to Labour MPs are not expecting a leadership challenge after the May elections. Although many/most of them would like a new leader before the next election, there is no agreement on who it should be, no agreement on an alternative platform and no real evidence that anyone (apart from Andy Burnham, who isn’t in parliament) would be a lot more popular.
Q&A: Has any newspaper ever been sued for libel (successfully or not) because of below-the-line comments?
Not that I’m aware of, as I have pointed out to the lawyers, but they say there is a first time for everything.
The expectation is that Labour will take a drubbing at the May elections. But they will still be the Government with an unassailable Parliamentary majoriity. Whatever they do or don’t do with it and however badly they do they remain the Party in Power. What does that say about democratic accountability?
Local elections don’t over-ride parliamentary elections in that sense. Your approach implies any governing party should have to give up power if it loses local elections.
Do you think that politicians in the UK are actually having less and less influence over the direction of the country? It seems that the transport minister can not positively effect our transport for instance – maybe as a result of denationalisation but it seems to be a general trend.
That is probably true because of factors like devolution, the rise in judicial review (which has empowered the courts) and the power of the regulatory state. But a minister with nous and initiative can still achieve a lot.
With no USP coming forth, how can Badenoch’s Tories continue to plough a path independent of Reform, that will be sufficiently right wing to distinguish them from Farage’s party ?
There seems to be little room for them to grow back into the space they have acacted to both reform and Labour on either side without some new thinking. But that is not coming through.
Do they simply sweat it out and wait/hope for Reform to implode and the voters lost to that party return to their fold ?
Yes, that seems to be the plan.
Andrew do you think we’ll see a return of Boris Johnson to front line politics like he threatened?
Subject to what I said earlier (see 4.10pm – “no outcome should be viewed as too impossible to actually happen”), the answer is no.
Q&A: what is the long term prognosis for Greens given the massive surge in membership. Will it translate to votes at the ballot box and if so what would that mean in a new parliament?
It will definitely be translated into votes. Lots of seats – that’s harder, but not impossible. What would that mean in a new parliament? A wealth tax and PR if the progressives are in charge. (Zack Polanski, unlike Keir Starmer, is passionate about PR.) A Reform UK government if the rise in the Green splits the progressive vote.
Do you believe Starmer actually wants the UK to rejoin the EU or are he’s closer ties speeches just trying to win back people who have switched to the LibDems and Green who do actually want to rejoin.
I don’t think Starmer thinks rejoining is realistic. He might be right. But until about 2013 you would have said leaving wasn’t realistic either.
Q&A: Are Politics Live blogs archived?
BeaconHill71 asks:
Q&A – Is the Guardian making any efforts to archive the liveblogs, and make them accessible/searchable in future? A minute-by-minute account of some of the events from the past decade or so would be an invaluable resource for future historians, but as with all digital media, there’s a risk of all this insight being lost if it’s not actively preserved.
Yes. You can find more than more than 3,500 of them here.
Q&A: Do you expect an election before 2029?
This is from Manchemec.
Do you and you colleagues have the slightest indication that there will be a general election before 2029? Labour still has a stonking parliamentary majority – splits or no – and is likely to appoint a new leader and PM without an election if Starmer goes. Today’s polls won’t decide an election three years hence.
If not, the coverage of Farage and Reform is vastly disproportionate. Despite this blanket coverage of his every pronouncement, he is not leader of the opposition and his party has just eight MPs. Its poor performance in local government gets far less coverage than his “news” conferences.
Nigel Farage is repeatedly talking up the prospect of an early election, as he was doing today (see 12.27pm), but I think that is mainly to keep his party on their toes and persuade journalists to take him seriously. Governments with huge majorities almost never call early elections (although anything after the summer of 2028 would not really count as an early election). If Starmer were replaced, a new leader might want an election to get a mandate for something not in the manifesto (joining an EU customs union), or to take advantage of a poll bounce. But it is also quite likely the much-talked-about leadership challenge won’t happen this year.
As for, does this mean we should therefore go back to ignoring Reform UK? No, I disagree. Another questioner asked:
Hi Andy. How do you think that the established British parties – and the Guardian for that matter – could have best countered the rise of Reform when they first arose? Why wasn’t that successful, and how should that approach change over time to address this?
I don’t have time to answer that fully, but I am sure ignoring them and hoping they would go away was not the right solution.
For more on why it can be a mistake to ignore politicians who aren’t mainstream, see 4.10pm.
Q&A: What is the point of sending the king to the US for a state visit?
Two questions on the state visit.
This is from BeOpenBeKind.
Do you think the government is correct in sending Charles to the USA? I recently saw David Dimbleby on Newsnight strongly opposing it.
And this is from irreverentnurse.
Q&A What are the advantages of sending Charles to USA? What is hoped to be achieved with trump?
The PM, like most of his predecessors, has long taken the view that it is worth using UK soft power, especially the royals, to curry favour with the US president of the day because that is helpful in other areas of the relationship. Given that Trump loves royals more than most presidents (because he would like to be one?), Keir Stamer’s decision to deploy the king is understandable, however gruesome.
There is some evidence the last state visit, and all the toadying, worked a bit with tariffs. It is much harder to make the case for it now. But we don’t have the counter-factual. Had the UK, and other European nations, been more critical from January 2025, it it quite possible that Trump would have by now fully left Nato and abandoned Ukraine.
Should the visit go ahead? I believe, as a nation, we would all feel better and prouder and stronger if we called it off (preferably at very short notice). But being congenitally inclined to try to see all sides to any argument, I can appreciate why that might not be such a wise idea.
Q&A: Why won’t Labour opt for PR?
Here are two questions on PR.
This is from Boadas10.
Q: Why are Labour risking political oblivion through 2nd and 3rd FPTP finishes in constituencies up and down the land at the next GE rather than supporting electoral reform and proportional representation? The latter would at least preserve a continued and fair level of political representation. Why bet the farm on once again gaming FPTP?
And this is from ibatch40.
Q: Hi Andrew, appreciate you taking time to do this. My question is about FPTP. Now we have multiple parties in a way we never have done in British politics, how sustainable is the FPTP system when we could end up with a PM whereby the vast majority of voters have voted against them? By keeping it are we not in danger of undermining democracy itself? What would be your suggestion as an alternative? *apologies, more than one question. Many thanks.
FPTP (first past the post) was defendable in what was a largely two-party system, but is a dangerous anachronism in the world of five or six-party politics. We are now in a situation where Reform UK is the most popular party in the UK (if you look at FPTP voting intention), but also the least popular. As this YouGov research showed, if you offer people a choice of Reform v one of the other main parties, Reform loses against all of them.
Even academic psephologists – who are normally quite neutral, politically – have spoken out against this.
So why is Labour so committed to FPTP. Before becoming an MP, Keir Starmer did once express some interest in PR, I think (I seem to remember from the Baldwin biography that he backed a policy document supporting the idea), but it has never been something he has shown much enthusiasm for, and he is not pushing for change. There is also a lot of opposition to FPTP in the PLP, and in the union movement generally. Partly its tribalism. And partly it is motivated by the fear that, under FPTP, Labour would never run a majority government again.
Personally, I think I would not have a problem with permanent, coalition politics and I think the case for PR is compelling on democratic and fairness grounds.
As for what Labour should do? They could put a bill for AV (the alternative vote – not strictly a PR system, but one that would normally produce a proprotionate result) in the king’s speech.
One reason why they won’t is because the nation rejected this in a referendum in AV. A lot of people would argue that another referendum would be needed. A bold PM could just ignore that, and bulldoze it through the House of Lords with the Parliament Act.
(An even bolder PM would bulldoze the House of Lords, but that’s another story.)
Q&A: Will Farage tolerate other high-profile leaders in Reform UK?
This is from Sonet66.
Q: Q&A Andrew, to what extent do you think Farage will tolerate other would-be ‘leaders’ within Reform, given the number of ‘personalities’ who have been defecting in that direction?
Nigel Farage has a long history of falling out with political colleagues who have challenged him in public, or threatened his popularity. I think that will continue, and I would expect at least one of the high-profile Tories who have joined recently to have fallen out with him by the time of the next election.
That said, Farage does seem to be taking the prospect of being PM quite seriously, and he must realise that you can’t run a government without a bit more delegation than he allowed when he was leader of Ukip. He talks a lot now about wanting to show that Reform UK is not a one-man band. (He did it again today – see 11.24am.) That does not mean his temperament will change. But it does seem likely that he is learning to become a bit more accommodating of his colleagues.
Q&A: What impact do Guardian lawyers have on what gets covered in the blog?
This is from adogsatonmypizza.
Q: Dear Andrew – How much dancing with The Guardian’s legal department do you have to do? Both yourself and regarding comments? Does it impact your output and does it ever frustrate you?
Getting copy approved by lawywers takes time, and that does not really work if you are writing a minute-by-minute live blog. And so, if a subject is legally contentious, I tend to avoid it and restrict myself to posting links to articles by colleagues on the topic that have been legalled.
And, on comments, we do turn them off if we think there is a risk of people posting material that might get us into trouble with libel or contempt laws. I don’t like having comments turned off but understand why it has to happen.
Q&A: Do government policies help people?
This is from Perspectiverox.
Q: Hi Andrew, my question is – are the UK government’s current policies genuinely helping citizens, or are they leaving many behind?
Some do, some don’t.
Trying to answer that question involves asking what they trying to do, whether they are achieving what they are trying to do, whether they or someone else is to blame if they’re not, and what else they should be doing?
These sorts of issues are being thrashed – in my blog and elsewhere – every day.
The answers are not simple. But that’s why politics is interesting.
Q&A: Does AI help with factchecking?
It’s time to speed things up.
This is from Brumbaer.
Q:Accepting that Farage is a good seller of snake oil, and the G does some job of countering those claims, what about the Greens’ policies? And Lib Dems? Badenoch does a pretty good job of destroying credibility on her own. At least the G explains the lack of realism behind some Labour/government claims.
Also, in this digital age with AI, how easy is factchecking?
I’ll just address the AI bit. And the short answer is – no.
I occasionally use AI for research, rather than Google, but not very often. And it does not help much with factchecking because you have to factcheck AI.
Also, increasingly Google is AI – which can be a problem.
The other day I used it to try to find out how tall Kemi Badenoch is (because she had said she would tackle a shoplifter herself, but not a big one). The Google AI told me she is 6ft.
She isn’t. She’s 5ft 4in.
Q&A: What stories would you have covered differently?
This is from Mattipus.
Q: Hi @andrew, thanks for doing the Q&A. I wanted to ask, looking back over your time overseeing the Guardian politics liveblog, are there any stories you wish you could have covered differently, or that you regret the Guardian could not cover?
Being slow to realise that Labour might elect Jeremy Corbyn a leader is what comes to mind most. Admittedly, everyone else in mainstream political journalism was in the same boat. However, that does not really minimise the failure. I still blush remembering a hustings right at the start of the campaign where I focused on the division between Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper on some arcane bit of policy, not realising that it was Corbyn’s broad-brush idealism that was going to win over the party. Ever since, I have always tried to make sure that a) supposedly dissident views get a proper hearing, and b) no outcome should be viewed as too imposssible to actually happen.
Q&A: Is being an MP a hard job, and are they up to it?
This is from Pazoozoo.
Q: You don’t have to look at BTL for long to conclude that an awful lot of people think they know better than politicians – but my application of Occam’s razor would be that a person paid well to do a job, who thinks about that job full time, knows more about it than me.
So who’s right: are MPs generally very bright, hard working people, or are they other reasons they get the top jobs?
Related question, is being an MP a hard job? In some ways it seems really hard, but then not many want to step down, even well well beyond retirement age, they must like it if that’s the case.
There are various threads in this question worth addressing separately.
First, you seem to assume that, if a job is hard, people won’t want to do it. That’s a category error. It is a hard job (at least, if you are doing it properly). But there are lots of people who want to become MPs, because often jobs that are particularly hard also tend to be particularly rewarding.
Are MPs generally bright and hard-working? Not always, but generally yes. It is hard to get elected without a fair amount of talent and a considerable amount of dedication (although some people slip through without much evidence of either).
Could they do a better job? A lot of that depends on how you view the job. That is not easy, because there is no job description.
If you view the job as being about effective legislating, or effective governing, then intelligence, experience, judgment etc are crucial.
But MPs are also there to represent their electors, and my late colleague Simon Hoggart was fond of telling a story about …
[At this point I turned to Google, and realised I could let Simon tell this story himself.]
An old mining MP called Bill Stone, who used to sit in the corner of the Strangers’ Bar drinking pints of Federation ale to dull the pain of his pneumoconiosis. He was eavesdropping on a conversation at the bar, where someone said exasperatedly about the Commons: “The trouble with this place is, it’s full of cunts!”
Bill put down his pint, wiped the foam from his lip and said: “They’s plenty of cunts in country, and they deserve some representation.” (To get the full effect, say it aloud in a broad northern accent.) As a description of parliamentary democracy, that strikes me as unbeatable.
If you take the Bill Stone view of parliamentary democracy, then intelligence, experience and judgment don’t matter so much.
Readers can make their own minds up about who the Bill Stones of this world will be voting for at the next election.
If you want a longer discussion about what qualities are needed by MPs, I do recommend Isabel Hardman’s five-part (15 minutes each) Radio 4 series What Do Our Politicians Need to Know Now?, which was on last week.
Q&A: Has my faith in politics declined?
This is from Jasper9220.
Q: Hi Andrew, by coincidence I recently read an “Ask Me Anything” you took part in on a Reddit forum some years ago. Of course, in that time a lot has changed but has your passion for political reporting ever wavered, or your faith in the political/media establishments more broadly?
I’m lucky enough to do a job I enjoy, and my enthusiasm and passion for political reporting has not changed.
But as for my faith in the political/media establishment?
I still think most people who go into politics are motivated by good intentions, and for all its faults the way Britain does politics is a lot better than the way it is conducted in many other parts of the world.
However, I do believe that around 10 years ago it all started to go a bit mad. Partly that may have been the financial crash, austerity, declining standards, and a sense that the system no longer delivers for working people, but a lot of it was social media, online hate and shorter attention spans. There seems to be more (even more?) anger and dishonesty in politics than there was. That is not good.
And my faith in the classic liberal defence of journalism (see 3.03pm) – give people the truth, and they will take good decisions – has taken a bit of knock, what with Brexit, Trump etc.
Still, there’s always hope.
Q&A: Is Labour’s drift to the right to blame for its collapse in the polls?
Here is a question about Labour.
This is from SOWhat.
To what extent do you think Labour and Starmer’s poor poll ratings are directly attributable to the actual or perceived drift to the right of Labour since the last election?
I think the main problem is that Labour came in promising change, people wanted change, and yet it feels like change has not happened.
Partly that it because Labour came into office having ruled out using any of the main levers available to raise revenue from tax. Rachel Reeves has raised tax, by a lot, but she would have a lot more scope to act if she had not ruled out raising income tax, national insurance or VAT. In that sense Labour is held back by a drift to the right before the general election.
Labour is still being hurt in some seats by its stance on Gaza, another area where the move to the right happened before the election. I was struck reading comments BTL this week to see some people still talking about Keir Starmer’s LBC interview when he (inadvertently, he later said) seemed to defend Israel cutting off Gaza’s water supply.
But the drift to the right before the general election (from 2020 to 2024) also coincided with a huge rise in Labour support.
Since the election, Labour has sounded more rightwing on immigration and public protest than it did before 2024. And I think this definitely has cost the party support, especially since Zack Polanski turned the Greens into a more compelling, leftwing proposition.
But I don’t think that is the whole story of why Keir Starmer is now so unpopular.
Q&A: Will Reform UK continue to see its support go down, and will election of lots of Reform-led councils have impact?
Here are two related questions.
This is from dianab.
Q: Is Reform likely to recover from current dip in the polls by such policies as guaranteeing triple lock and sacking a spokesperson? (apparently for inappropriate comment but might be hidden reason given their record on appalling statements)
And this is from RichienotsoRich.
Q: With the polls indicating huge gains for Reform after May 7, might this be a gift to Labour come 2029? Reform led councils might (at best) be unable to deliver promises and (at worse) prove how dysfunctional they are at governing.
Individual announcements by any party tend to have no visible impact on polling, and so getting rid of Simon Dudley, or committing to the pension triple lock, won’t make any real difference on their own.
It is definitely the case the Reform UK’s support has plateaued and gone down a bit. The pollster Peter Kellner showed that clearly in a recent Substack post. Explaining why, he said:
Why has Reform slipped? Farage’s personal ratings are also down – but his fortunes simply track his party’s: they do not help us determine cause and effect. For those of us old enough, a trip 45 years down memory lane gives us a clue to what is happening. In 1981, the newly formed Social Democratic Party, formed by MPs breaking away from Labour, surged ahead in the polls. But the same polls also showed that many of its supporters neither knew what the SDP stood for or supported its signature policies. Over time, its aims became better known, and voters started to drift away.
Something similar may be happening to Reform. At its peak, its support came from two distinct groups – devotees who supported Farage’s distinctive nationalism, not just on immigration but on issues such as climate change. They were the great majority of the 15 per cent who voted Reform at the last general election and have stayed loyal. The second group, who lifted the party’s total above 30 per cent last year, look like a cross-section of the electorate, united by their feelings of insecurity and their hostility to both Labour and the Conservatives, but not by shared opinions, other than on immigration.
As Reform’s agenda has become better known, and more voters become aware of its stumbles in running the counties it captured last May, it has lost a chunk of last year’s shallow converts.
In a recent article for the New Statesman, Ben Walker develops a variant of this theory; he says there is evidence that Reform UK is losing votes to the Greens.
Will the decline continue? Not necessarily, but there are at least two factors that pose a potential threat. By the time of the next election, it is likely that Donald Trump will be even more reviled by the British electorate than he is already, and that won’t help Reform. Also, Reform is unusual for a political party in having its popularity almost entirely tied up with the charisma of a single politician. Farage is not that old, and seems pretty robust and healthy, but if for any reason they were to lose him as a leader, they would be in trouble.
As to the impact on their long-term fortunes of the local elections, and their probably victory in many councils, it is almost certain that this will produce a rich crop of ‘Reform council in chaos’ stories of the kind we have already seen (particularly in the Guardian).
But it would be a mistake to assume that this will do them much damage nationally. How many people follow council politics carefully? In reality, having a strong base in local government will probably help the party a lot, because it is much easier to win parliamentary seats in areas where you are organised and well represented on the council. Just ask the Liberal Democrats, who have been doing this for years.
Q&A: When will the Guardian ‘come off the fence’ with Reform UK?
For the rest of the day I will be mostly/wholly focused on responding to questions for the Q&A, and I will start with this one – because it related to the topic raised with me most often BTL.
This is from MEGAHEAD2.
Does the Guardian editorial department have a general approach to the increasing extreme right wing views that it reports on politics live? It often seems that the ‘balance’ in the reporting is muted, and not, imo, sufficiently robust. The kind of political talk/policy/views being aired by populist (and more established) right wing parties is absolutely fascistic in some of the themes and aims. At what point does the Guardian decide that it needs to come off the fence?
First, I’d say I don’t think the Guardian is on the fence re Reform UK. We have been a newspaper for a very long time, and now we are a global digital news organisation too, and – as newspapers have been doing for centuries – we develope a collective view that we express in editorials. If you read them, they are very clear; the Guardian is not neutral about Reform UK. We appalled by much of what they say and do.
But what I think you are asking is, why is there so much Reform UK coverage? And, if it has to be there, why is it not harsher and more critical?
On the first point, you talk about extreme rightwing views being reported here increasingly. But that is a reflection of the way the world has changed. Donald Trump is president of the US. There are far-right parties at or near the top of the polls all over Europe. Even in what used to be the party of the mainstream right in the UK (the Conservative party), views are being expressed that would have been regarded as extreme and unacceptable just a decade ago.
So how do we respond? Some readers tell me we should just ignore Reform UK because writing about them gives them publicity, and helps them. But if the Guardian were just to ignore them, that would make no difference at all to their political progress, and readers would just be less informed.
Other readers tell me they want the Guardian to be more aggressive, as if everything we publish should be intended to bring them down. Some “news” organisations function like this – essentially as propaganda vehicles. But that is not the sort of reporting or journalism we do. We are not a mouthpiece for a political campaign. We do campaign on particular issues, and we are committed to liberal progressive values, but we are committed to reporting the world as it is. We think that quality journalism is a public good, and that if people get reliable, accurate about what it happening in the world, they will make better choices.
(This does not always work; I will post more on this in reponse to another question later.)
What is, though, essential is to challenge and contest false claims made by politicians. This applies across the board, but it is particularly important with populists like Reform UK because they are particularly cavalier with the truth.
Do we do enough of this? Across the board, I think yes, absolutely, the Guardian has a very good record – particularly challenging Reform. Look at our reporting about Nigel Farage’s alleged racism at Dulwich college, or his Cameo activities.
Within a blog, it is slightly harder. I write thousands of words a day quoting politicians (not least because I think it is important to get things on the record, in a place where they can be searched and referenced later). Does every dodgy Reform UK claim get challenged? Probably not, because I don’t have the time to factcheck every sentence. But the significant ones definitely do.
And news does not exist in a vacuum. I write this blog on the assumption that, if you are reading this bit of the Guardian, you will probably be reading others too. And I think if you do that you will accept our coverage is, to use your phrase, “sufficiently robust”.
